A recently enacted piece of legislation in Washington state which requires Catholic clergy to break the seal of confession and report possible child abuse if the information is revealed during a confession is being lambasted by experts as an egregious violation of religious liberty and an unfair targeting of the clergy-penitent relationship.

The bill, known as SB 5375, was signed into law on May 2 by Governor Bob Ferguson (D) amid a firestorm of controversy. While supporters of the bill say that “children will be safer as a result of passing this law,” bishops within the Catholic Church say that the bill is overstepping the constitutional boundaries between church and state. “People of every religion in the State of Washington and beyond should be alarmed by this overreach of our Legislature and Governor,” Seattle Archbishop Paul D. Etienne stated.

Spokane Bishop Thomas A. Daly further elaborated that it would be impossible for priests to abide by the bill. “I want to assure you that your shepherds, bishop and priests, are committed to keeping the seal of confession — even to the point of going to jail. The Sacrament of Penance is sacred and will remain that way in the Diocese of Spokane.” An auxiliary bishop of Seattle further elaborated that bishops and priests counsel people to meet with them outside of confession if they have child abuse to report.

Experts like Eric Kniffin, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, are also pointing out that the bill inexplicably singles out Catholic priests, who are already mandatory reporters of child abuse, among other professions as not having a right to confidentiality between them and penitents.

“All 50 states have mandatory reporter laws saying that certain people, whether it’s everyone or certain professions, have to report suspected child abuse or neglect to public authorities,” he explained during “Washington Watch” last week. “All 50 states also have a recognition of the clergy-penitent relationship, which respects the confidentiality of certain religious communications. … Washington, in passing this bill, recognizes that there are privileged communications under the law in a lot of different professions. The clergy-penitent communication exists traditionally alongside the attorney-client privilege, the physician-patient privilege, the spousal privilege, and other privileges. And what’s really remarkable about this bill is Washington state has said we will respect every other privilege except for the clergy privilege.”

Kniffin went on to note that state legislators who supported the bill offered no explanation as to why Catholic clergy are singled out.

“There’s no reasoning, and that’s one of the things that makes this really remarkable,” he observed. “I worked together with the sponsoring senator last year in order to create a narrow religious exemption, which the senator seemed to be okay with last year. And this year she came out and said that she was abandoning that for no other reason than she’s tired of compromising. And that’s not a good reason enough.”

Kniffin further emphasized that Catholic priests are bound by strict church laws that prohibit them from publicly sharing anything they hear during confession. “I think it’s important to note that this is not the Archbishop of Seattle’s rule — this is part of the canon law of the Catholic Church. The canon law actually says that violating the … confidentiality of the confessional is so important it ranks right alongside physically assaulting a pope. This is just an absolute no no, and a priest automatically excommunicates himself if he does so.”

As to whether the new law will stand up when challenged in court, Kniffin predicted that the bill will likely run into stiff challenges.

“Fortunately, both the federal Constitution and the Washington state Constitution have strong protections for religious liberty,” he noted. “… [R]eligious liberty is not absolute, but the state is put to a high burden when it invades religious liberty. … You can say that the state is treating other secular privileges with more respect than the religious privilege. … Another is that the vast majority of other states have found that they do not need to invade the clergy-penitent relationship in order to protect children. [Those] are going to be the two big problems that Washington state runs [into] as it seeks to defend this law.”

Kniffin also noted that SB 5375 does not specifically delineate what constitutes the “child abuse” that clergy must report. “[S]tates across the country say that they want mandatory reporters to err on the side of reporting, and so if something might be abuse [or] neglect, they want mandatory reporters to tell the government and let the government sort it out. And so what counts as neglect? What counts as abuse? Those are really unanswered, undefined questions, and that’s what makes the cloud over religious liberty all the more important here.”

Shortly after the SB 5375 was signed into law, the Department of Justice announced that it would be opening a civil rights investigation into the bill, characterizing it as “anti-Catholic.”

“I think they will confirm what they already said in their statement that this is blatant discrimination against religion,” Kniffin predicted of the investigation. “It would be one thing if religious clergy were asking for something that nobody else got. But as the Washington law itself acknowledges, there are privileged communications, and it is unfair. It is unconstitutional for Washington state to treat secular privileges better than religious privileges. That is what DOJ is going to focus on, and I think that they will agree with me that this law is unconstitutional.”

“Washington Watch” guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice concurred, wondering what the bill could lead to if it was allowed to remain law. “It’s very frightening. … [This] could lead to greater violations of religious freedom. [L]ike we used to say in Congress all the time, you give some of these people an inch and they become a ruler, and that could very well be the case here.”