The Grand Canyon State is repeating the errors of the Evergreen State and attempting to force Catholic priests and other clergy to violate the seal of confession, despite a recent court ruling on the issue.

Arizona Rep. Stacey Travers (D) introduced legislation last month in the state’s House of Representatives that would require Catholic priests to report any instances of child abuse confessed in the Catholic sacrament of penance, commonly known as confession. Under Catholic canon law (the laws governing the Catholic Church’s sacraments, its structure and organization, and the conduct of its ministers), a priest who violates the confessional seal and repeats what has been shared with him in the confessional is excommunicated, the most serious and stringent penalty the Catholic Church can impose.

H.B. 2039 would revise Arizona statutes to remove an exemption for the Catholic sacrament of confession from mandatory child abuse-reporting laws. Failure to comply with the law would constitute a Class 6 felony under Arizona state law, penalizing Catholic clergy with fines of up to $150,000 and up to two years in prison. The revised statutes would not require clergy to report abuse that has occurred in the past but would require reporting of abuse that is ongoing or that “will occur in the future.” The legislation would further strike a section requiring the consent of the penitent and compel Catholic priests to violate the confessional seal in civil cases concerning child abuse.

Travers introduced a nearly-identical bill in 2023, but state Rep. Quang Nguyen (R), a Catholic who at the time served as the chair of the Arizona House Judiciary Committee, refused to even give Travers’s bill a hearing. “The seal of confession is a sacred, sacred part of the Catholic church,” Nguyen told reporters at the time. “The seal of confession is never to be broken. And priests will go to jail for it.” Then-Rep. Victoria Steele (D) pushed a similar bill in 2022, prompting a response from Arizona’s Catholic bishops. The Arizona Catholic Conference, representing the state’s Catholic bishops, called Steele’s legislation “hostile to religious liberty” and was “pleased” when the legislation failed to pass the House.

Travers introduced the same piece of legislation in January last year, but the measure failed to pass the House. “Priests cannot break the Seal of Confession under any circumstances and proposals to do so demonstrate a continued and troubling threat to our important religious freedoms,” the Arizona Catholic Conference commented at the conclusion of the 2025 legislative session. “Arizona is fortunate that its legislative leaders value this basic freedom and did not allow this measure to move.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says of the confessional seal, “Given the delicacy and greatness of this ministry and the respect due to persons, the Church declares that every priest who hears confessions is bound under very severe penalties to keep absolute secrecy regarding the sins that his penitents have confessed to him.” The Catechism further notes, “This secret, which admits of no exceptions, is called the ‘sacramental seal,’ because what the penitent has made known to the priest remains ‘sealed’ by the sacrament.” Catholic leaders for the last 800 years have required that priests maintain strict secrecy over the sins confessed to them in the sacrament, a rule formalized for the entire Catholic Church by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.

State legislators in Washington approved a similar bill, which was signed into law last year, requiring Catholic priests to report child abuse they learned of in the confessional. A series of lawsuits filed by Washington’s Catholic bishops, a coalition of Orthodox churches, and President Donald Trump’s Justice Department pressured the state to agree not to enforce the law. Shortly afterward, Judge David G. Estudillo of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington blocked the law indefinitely, declaring it unconstitutional. According to Estudillo, the law explicitly targeted clergy, maintaining a “mandatory reporting” exemption for privileged professions such as attorneys and therapists, but eliminating any such exemption for clergy in the confessional.

Under Arizona state law at present, only attorney-client and clergy-penitent privileges are exempt from mandatory child abuse-reporting rules.