SEATTLE (WA)
Rolling Stone [New York NY]
July 20, 2025
By Alex Ashley
Washington moved to close a dangerous loophole. Now there’s a constitutional showdown pitting religious freedoms against the duty to protect children
On Friday morning, May 2, 2025, supporters of Washington Senate Bill 5375 were ushered through the massive concrete arches, and up the grand staircases of the Washington State Capitol — the veins of Alaskan Tokeen marble guiding them past oil portraits and century-old busts — to the governor’s conference room on the second floor.
Inside, amid the dark wood paneling and gleaming seal of the state, Washington’s new Governor and former Attorney General Bob Ferguson addressed the small crowd of advocates, lawmakers, and child abuse survivors who had gathered behind him.
“I’m a Catholic as some of you know. I’m aware of my upbringing,” he said, before adding plainly: “For me this is very clear legislation and important legislation.”
Ferguson uncapped a blue felt-tip Paper Mate and, with the stroke of the pen, signed into law one of the most consequential child protection measures in recent memory, mandating the state’s clergy — for the first time in 50 years — to report child abuse.
“The room felt like it was buzzing,” recalls Sara Young, an advocate who was there that morning. She grew up one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, surviving years of abuse she says congregation elders ignored. “None of us really knew what to expect, but being there felt like a weight finally lifted.”
For supporters like Young, it closed a loophole that let clergy across denominations keep abuse in the dark. For opponents, it was an attack on religious freedom with no exception for sacred rites like confession.
In that moment, Ferguson closed the door on a battle two decades in the making — and opened another. When the room cleared that morning, no one — not even Ferguson — could have predicted just how quickly the law’s challengers would mobilize.
Within 72 hours, Trump’s Justice Department, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, had launched a First Amendment probe into what it called an “anti-Catholic” law.
The Archdiocese of Seattle, along with the dioceses of Yakima and Spokane, filed a federal lawsuit — Etienne v. Ferguson — claiming the new law was a punch thrown straight at the Catholic Church; that it forces priests to choose between obeying the state or violating a core religious duty.
Then, on June 23, the U.S. Department of Justice formally threw its weight behind the Catholic Church, filing a formal motion to intervene in the case — a request that was granted on Tuesday.
And on Friday, Judge David G. Estudillo issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the new law “as to the Sacrament of Confession” for the Seattle, Yakima, and Spokane dioceses, days before its July 27 effective date.
What began as a move to close a dangerous loophole exploded into a high-stakes national fight over the limits of religious liberty: whether the First Amendment allows church doctrine to overrule secular law when the two conflict.
At its core, this battle turns on a crucial question the courts — and now the country — are forced to confront: Where does religious freedom end and the duty to protect children begin?
Washington Closes the Clergy Loophole
Under Washington’s new child protection law, clergy of all denominations are on the hook, just like physicians, nurses, social workers, teachers, law enforcement officers, childcare providers, and others.
The law does not force priests to testify in court, turn over notes, or violate attorney-client privilege. What it does is narrow but consequential: If clergy learn about child abuse — even during confession — they have to notify authorities within 48 hours.
That single requirement closes a loophole most states still leave wide open.
Across the U.S., child abuse reporting laws are a fragmented patchwork shaped by decades of political compromise and religious lobbying. Over the past two decades, efforts in other states — such as Kentucky, Montana, North Dakota, and Wisconsin — to remove the clergy-penitent exemption have routinely stalled long before any high-profile showdown.
Technically, clergy in all 50 states, D.C., and Guam are mandatory reporters of child abuse. But 33 states carve out exemptions for what is learned in confession or spiritual counseling.
Washington now joins just six other states — including some of the most religiously conservative in the country — that take exemptions for clergy off the table completely: New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Texas, and West Virginia.
But even where states have laws like this on paper, enforcement is often a dead end. That’s because 36 states have either their own Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRAs) or constitutional provisions requiring “strict scrutiny” for laws that burden religious practice. In those states, mandatory reporting rules that reach the confessional are nearly impossible to enforce. In much of the country, that means a priest or pastor can legally keep abuse secret if it’s disclosed in a privileged setting.
Washington has no state-level RFRA, but its constitution has at times been interpreted to demand strict scrutiny for religious freedom claims. That lack of certainty around religious exemptions — and specifically, confession — is part of what has made Washington’s new law so contested.
Thou Shalt Not Tell?
For Catholics, the confessional isn’t just private counseling; it’s a foundational sacrament. Behind the screen, a parishioner quietly confesses what weighs on their soul: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” The priest listens, counsels, prescribes a penance, and offers absolution. Known as Reconciliation, the rite is essential for spiritual life: Without it, believers cannot receive the Eucharist, the Church’s central act of worship.
In a public statement titled “Clergy: Answerable to God or the State?” Seattle Archbishop Paul D. Etienne — the lead plaintiff in the Church’s lawsuit against Washington — invoked canon law, the Church’s legal code, which deems the confessional seal “inviolable” and makes breaking it a crime. He warned plainly that any priest who violated it to report child abuse would face expulsion from the Church.
Unlike abusing a child, breaking the seal triggers latae sententiae: automatic excommunication.
“You know, Jesus talks about protecting children at Matthew 18:6,” says Hiram Sasser, executive general counsel at First Liberty Institute, the legal group representing the Archdiocese of Seattle. He cites the verse in which Jesus warns that anyone who causes a child to stumble should have a millstone hung around their neck and be thrown into the sea. “They’re not seeking the same level of exemption that lawyers are provided in the law,” he says of the Catholic Church. “If they did, I would probably not want to participate in representing them, because I think those things are important. The only exception we’re seeking is just for the Sacrament of Confession.”
But not so for the Trump DOJ, who are advancing a far more sweeping argument that goes for the law’s jugular.
By filing a formal complaint, the Department of Justice is effectively teaming up with Washington’s Catholic bishops to overturn the state’s mandatory reporting law, in one of the most aggressive federal moves to back organized religion in recent memory.
“Laws that explicitly target religious practices such as the Sacrament of Confession have no place in our society,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, who heads the Justice Department’s civil rights division, in a June 23 press release.
It’s a stark divide. The bishops frame this as a limited fight to protect the sacred Catholic rite of confession. The DOJ sees something much bigger: a sweeping threat to religious liberty for everyone. While the Church asks for a surgical carveout, the feds want the whole law gone, putting all clergy back in the clear with no duty to report abuse.
In its complaint, the DOJ argues that Washington’s law unfairly singles out clergy while letting secular professions, such as therapists and lawyers, keep similar confidentiality intact.
But that comparison only goes so far.
Attorney–client privilege is not a blanket of secrecy granted out of deference to the profession; it’s a rule designed to protect the legal system. Clients must be able to speak freely with their lawyers to ensure fair trials — an instrumental privilege serving the public interest, not the lawyer’s. Psychotherapist–patient privilege, likewise, is structured to encourage patients to disclose sensitive personal information essential for effective treatment. Moreover, in most states including Washington, licensed therapists are mandatory reporters, legally required to report suspected child abuse. Both privileges are regulated by the state, enforced through licensing boards, and bound by explicit ethical rules.
Clergy, by contrast, are unlicensed and unregulated. Their claim to absolute confidentiality has historically existed outside any formal system of oversight, creating a space where institutional interests can override the protection of children — and where intimate knowledge of parishioners can be abused by those in power.
Still, beyond defending the confessional seal itself, the Catholic Church claims its internal reforms place it a step ahead of the state when it comes to protecting children, so they do not need more oversight.
Accountability, In-House
After The Boston Globe’s 2002 “Spotlight” investigation, and other explosive reporting exposed widespread sexual abuse and cover-ups, the Catholic Church was forced to confront a crisis of its own making. In response, it rolled out a slate of reforms it argues are proof of serious change.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops now maintains the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, which includes independent audits, lay oversight boards, and national policies requiring clergy and lay staff to report suspected abuse.
Additionally, the dioceses of Seattle, Spokane, and Yakima emphasize that priests are instructed to counsel suspected abusers or victims to come forward outside of confession, where mandated reporting can occur. They note that all three dioceses have undergone third-party audits and have supported mandatory reporting laws, provided confession is off limits, according to court documents.
But investigations show these self-imposed safeguards have repeatedly failed to prevent continued cover-up — not just in Washington, but nationwide.
A 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report found more than 300 Catholic priests abused over 1,000 identifiable children in six dioceses over 70 years, with thousands more likely uncounted. The grand jury documented church leaders persuading victims not to report, pressuring law enforcement to drop investigations, and systematically reassigning accused priests to new parishes without warning communities. Among the most egregious cases were a priest raping a girl in the hospital after a tonsillectomy, another impregnating a minor and arranging her abortion, and coordinated diocesan instructions to call rape “inappropriate contact” and conceal removals as “sick leave.” The investigation revealed diocesan “secret archives” tracking abuse allegations, internal church lawyers shielding records, and tactics explicitly designed to “avoid scandal,” while senior church officials who enabled cover-ups retained their posts or advanced in rank.
A 2019 Associated Press investigation found more than 900 clergy across the U.S. credibly accused of child sexual abuse who were missing from diocesan and religious order disclosure lists, exposing major gaps in the Church’s promised transparency nationwide.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ internal audits reveal serious gaps. Annual compliance reviews — funded and overseen by the bishops themselves — depend heavily on diocesan self-reporting and have repeatedly flagged failures to fully implement safeguards. Survivors and advocates argue the system prioritizes restoring public credibility over real accountability, leaving secular authorities sidelined. In their landmark 2004 report, the U.S. bishops’ national review board acknowledged that “in the past, secrecy has created an atmosphere that has inhibited the healing process and, in some cases, enabled sexually abusive behavior to be repeated.”
While the Catholic Church has made efforts at reform, its track record offers a case study in the limits of institutional self-regulation, especially when the institution in question controls its own transparency, discipline, and accountability.
It’s a problem that extends well beyond Catholicism, playing out across the broader faith landscape.
Privilege Across Religions
Etienne v. Ferguson hinges on the argument that Washington’s law imposes special burdens on Catholic clergy that do not apply equally to other religions. “Because the Catholic Church is one of the few religious organizations with a doctrine of absolute confidentiality,” the complaint asserts, Washington’s law “uniquely targets and burdens Catholic priests.”
But central to the push for reform as Washington’s new mandatory reporting law moved through the legislature was evidence of how clergy-penitent privilege had been exploited in other faith communities.
Advocates argued that scrapping the clergy reporting exemption wasn’t about picking on any one faith, but leveling the playing field — making sure every religious institution, no matter how powerful, must play by the same rules when it comes to protecting children.
Court records show Jehovah’s Witnesses — who have insisted for decades that they maintain no clergy-laity distinction — have nevertheless invoked the Catholic-rooted exemption broadly to protect internal conversations related to abuse allegations challenged in court. Not just direct confessions, but discussions with congregation elders, legal advisors, and staff at their global headquarters.
“Even though Jehovah’s Witnesses do not apply the term ‘clergy’ to elders in a religious context, the legal definition of ‘clergy’ is far more inclusive,” says Jarrod Lopes, national spokesman for Jehovah’s Witnesses. He notes that elders routinely share information about abuse allegations among themselves and with the denomination’s headquarters, arguing that this kind of internal communication is essential. “Nothing in the Bible or the beliefs and practices of Jehovah’s Witnesses prevents elders from internally sharing those details confidentially to ensure that children are protected,” he adds.
The religious organization of more than 9 million works within a structured framework of policies that guide how abuse allegations are investigated and handled within the congregation. They are largely internal, even in cases involving serious misconduct.
A striking example comes from Caekaert v. Watchtower, a 2020 case in Montana, where elders in congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses investigated allegations of child sexual abuse, interrogated the accused, documented his confession in detail, and sent those records to the denomination’s New York headquarters. Plaintiffs argued the records shouldn’t be protected as confidential clergy communication because several elders were involved and the details were sent to the church’s headquarters, but the court disagreed. It ruled that under Montana law, such internal handling of abuse allegations — however extensive — fell within the scope of the church’s established religious practice and thus remained protected by clergy privilege.
The decision effectively shielded even confessions of abuse from discovery, setting a precedent where institutional secrecy could be maintained so long as it was formalized as religious protocol. The Montana case ended in a settlement, but the organization’s legal strategy hasn’t escaped scrutiny: Philip Brumley, a longtime general counsel for Jehovah’s Witnesses, was sanctioned over $150,000 for submitting affidavits that falsely claimed the organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses had no role in Montana congregations during the years when abuse occurred. A federal judge called his declarations “reckless and misleading,” finding they delayed justice in child sexual abuse cases.
Across the country, other faiths have invoked clergy privilege to keep abuse hidden behind closed doors.
In Arizona, the state Supreme Court let LDS bishops withhold evidence after a man who’d confessed to abusing his daughters continued for years. In California, Scientology fought court orders to release thousands of internal records, arguing that narrow clergy-penitent laws unfairly favored Catholic-style confessions over its multi-minister approach.
What began as a limited protection for the intimacy of confession has morphed into a sprawling legal shield used to protect the pulpit, not the pews. And the more deeply religious institutions embed confidentiality into their doctrine, the stronger their legal insulation becomes, even when abuse is undisputed and dozens of individuals are involved.
This mounting evidence — how other faith communities exploited clergy-penitent privilege to circumvent reporting child abuse — is what drove Washington toward reform.
The Real Catalyst
In 2022, Seattle investigative journalist Wilson Criscione dug into allegations of child sexual abuse within Washington State congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The result was an incendiary exposé for InvestigateWest that uncovered not only a decades-long pattern of child sexual abuse, but a coordinated effort to conceal it.
Criscione’s story revealed that in cases of alleged abuse, congregation elders follow an internal playbook; standard protocol baked into the organization’s internal policies that often bypasses law enforcement.
“When an elder in a congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses becomes aware of an allegation of abuse, he has been instructed to immediately contact Watchtower’s Legal Department for advice regarding the law in the state where he lives,” says Lopes, the national spokesperson for Jehovah’s Witnesses. “We consider obeying the laws of the land as an extension of obeying and worshipping God.”
Lopes says they monitor the most current versions of all mandatory reporting laws in the United States.
But in many cases, Criscione found, elders were explicitly instructed to withhold reports unless secular law demanded it. In Washington, there was no such mandate. Decades earlier, lawmakers had quietly removed clergy from the list of mandatory reporters, creating a legal blind spot that allowed for decades of silence.
Criscione’s reporting caught the attention of Mary Lou Dickerson, a former Democratic state representative from Seattle. Two decades earlier, she had spent years trying to bridge the gap Criscione’s article exposed.
In 2005, Dickerson had introduced legislation that would have required clergy to report suspected child abuse. A lapsed Catholic who left the church in the mid-1960s, Dickerson holds a Master’s in social work and considered herself one of the few true child advocates in the legislature at the time.
Still, she felt she was no match for the political muscle of the Seattle Archdiocese.
“It felt to me like the Catholic Church was using its political power — and really strongly — to oppose that bill,” she says. “They unloaded all they could against it, and they were instrumental in its defeat.”
Years later, her determination was reignited. Though she’d been retired from state politics for more than a decade, she picked up the phone.
“She called me and said, ‘Hey, you should know, I worked on this, and I’d love to see you take it up,’” says state Sen. Noel Frame, a survivor of child sexual abuse, who now represents the same district Dickerson once did.
What followed was a three-year legislative battle to finish what Dickerson had started, and to pull Washington — long a national outlier — into the modern era of child protection.
Frame now found herself, like Dickerson decades before, squared off against one of Washington’s — and in fact the nation’s — most urgent constitutional tests: balancing the First Amendment with the state’s secular mission to safeguard its most vulnerable.
Closing the Loophole
Following the landmark 1962 Kempe Report on battered children, states rapidly passed child abuse reporting laws, often with federal nudges. The law that took shape in Washington was updated in 1971 to mandate reporting by clergy.
But in 1975, lawmakers quietly cut clergy from the mandatory reporter list during a special session, burying it in a larger legislative overhaul without debate or notice. Why remains a legal ghost story of a critical safeguard undone in silence, but the change held for five decades.
When attempts were made to update this law in 2023, Washington’s framework had become not just an outlier, but among the most permissive in the country — the only state to go backward from clergy being mandated reporters (in 1971) to being removed (in 1975), and then never restored.
On paper, the law divided lawmakers along predictable party lines. But behind closed doors, it forced unexpected reckonings, especially for those caught between political identity, religious tradition, and the duty to protect children.
In 2023 and 2024, the bill bounced between chambers as lawmakers fought over clergy privilege. It first passed the Senate with a confession carveout, but the House removed it after abuse survivors and advocates highlighted the risks. The Senate rejected the change. Despite repeated negotiations, the two sides couldn’t agree for over a year.
That year, lawmakers attempted a sleight-of-hand fix, drafting a “limited” privilege that protected only Catholic confession while excluding other religions, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons.
This version of the bill gained broad bipartisan support, and even a nod of approval from the Seattle Archdiocese itself.
In an email obtained by Rolling Stone, Jean Welch Hill, the newly appointed head of the Washington State Catholic Conference, told amendment backers the Conference “would not oppose you moving forward with your amendments,” but added a caution: “please do not reference the WSCC or Archdiocese in any public statements regarding support or opposition.”
Neither the WSCC nor Hill responded to requests for comment.
But Catholic survivors who testified in the House torched it as a carveout designed to protect the very institution that had hurt them.
Facing no path to Senate concurrence, the bill died in committee.
Meanwhile, then-Attorney General Bob Ferguson opened a probe into the Archdiocese’s handling of abuse allegations, suing to enforce subpoenas for internal records — a case still on appeal.
This year, as lawmakers pushed again to make clergy mandatory reporters, Catholic lobbyists descended on Olympia, branding the bill a direct attack on the sacred seal of confession. They deployed their heaviest hitters — including Hill, prominent priests, and a small army of church lawyers — to pressure lawmakers in both chambers.
At times, several Republicans appeared to use their roles to echo the institutional voice of the Church itself.
One lawmaker, Rep. Phil Fortunato, describes himself as the de facto leader of what he calls the ‘Catholic Caucus’ — an informal group of Catholic Republican legislators who, by his account, view representing the Church’s interests as part of their role in public office.
“Every week we have mass in Olympia. We set it up. My office actually coordinates it,” says Fortunato. “And one of the things that we try to do is coordinate with the Catholic Conference. I keep track of all the Catholics that are in the house, in the Senate and how we vote on those particular things.”
Frame corroborates this, saying Fortunato sent emails to all lawmakers he believed to be Catholic urging them to band together to stop passage of her legislation.
Still, the Church’s stance isn’t monolithic among Catholic lawmakers. Several self-identifying Catholics in the state legislature gave full-throated support for the bill.
The opposition was met by a formidable, diverse coalition — former Jehovah’s Witnesses, current and former Catholics, abuse survivors, faith leaders, and even schoolchildren, all united in a single demand: close every loophole.
Among them was Mary Dispenza, a former nun, lifelong Catholic, and survivor of clergy abuse. On the morning of the bill signing, she stood behind Governor Ferguson with tears in her eyes to witness a moment she’d spent years fighting for.
“We want the best of Catholicism, which is protecting children,” Dispenza says. “Secrecy is not the best of the Catholic church. Secrecy protects perpetrators.”
Dispenza was nearly 50, working in pastoral care for the Seattle Archdiocese, when a mandatory workshop on sexual misconduct triggered her first flashback: a vision of her seven-year-old self being molested by a priest in a dark auditorium in 1947. That priest, the late Rev. George Neville Rucker, went on to serve for decades and would later be accused by more than 30 children. Dispenza confronted him, and joined a civil lawsuit. But she was later fired by the Church after coming out as a lesbian in the early ‘90s. In 2014, she released a book, Split, which recounts her experiences.
In 2003, Rucker’s charges were dropped after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling struck down California’s attempt to revive old abuse cases by extending the statute of limitations. Rucker, who had been living in a home for retired priests, walked free without trial. He died in 2014.
“This is about power, I believe. Just fighting for the sake of power,” Dispenza says. “The Catholic Church is the largest and most powerful church in the world…But children have no voice. They have no power. And I don’t know where this is going to go, but I know we’re prepared for a fight here. If we need to, we will fight for the children.”
Dispenza wasn’t the only one standing behind the governor that day.
With her was Tim Law — an attorney and lifelong member of Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Seattle, where he was baptized 75 years ago and attended grade school; a parish he still calls home today.
“My mother and her parents were members going back to 1920. My grandparents helped build the church during the Great Depression,” Law says. “This is my community.”
Law is a co-founder of Ending Clergy Abuse, an international network of survivors and advocates. And for the past year, Law worked with such non-profit groups as the Clergy Accountability Project to move the needle in the Washington State legislature.
“I’m a great believer in the faith of the Church and the gospel of Jesus, and this is my way of living out that faith,” Law says.
He has spent the last decade pressuring Catholic leadership to reform from within. Five years ago, he and other local Catholics sought a meeting with Seattle Archbishop Etienne, lead plaintiff now in the Catholics’ suit against Washington state, to propose a kind of truth and reconciliation process; one that would open the Church’s abuse files to review and help chart a path forward.
“He kept saying he wanted to cooperate. Tells the public he wants to cooperate,” Law says. “But when they get together in a room, they get nothing.”
Law’s advocacy has not come without consequence.
Just days after the bill signing, Law says he was barred from long-held duties at his parish — a directive he claims came directly from Seattle Archbishop Etienne after parishioners circulated a photo of Law standing with the governor at the event in May. The archdiocese denies Law’s claims, stating in an email that it “does not have a policy regarding lay leaders who speak publicly on controversial legislative matters.”
Still, advocates like Law and Dispenza won over the House, which passed the bill out of committee before it stalled in the budget process. The Senate didn’t flinch, pushing it across the finish line with a decisive 64–31 vote — finally delivering the words they’d spent years fighting to hear from the Speaker of the House:
“Having received the constitutional majority, Senate Bill 5375 is declared passed.”
Poised to Reach the Court
Washington stepped into this battle at a uniquely combustible political moment: one shaped by a Trump-era conservative legal movement that aggressively champions religious liberty claims in court — even as the same DOJ faces backlash for keeping the Epstein files sealed, protecting evidence tied to one of the nation’s most notorious pedophiles and sex traffickers. Conservative religious influence increasingly shapes American policy debates, transforming religious liberty into a defining front in the nation’s culture wars. Under Donald Trump, the federal judiciary was reshaped with dozens of conservative judges sympathetic to expansive religious freedom arguments. And this DOJ — led by Trump appointees — has shown a pattern of ideologically charged litigation on behalf of religious interests, turning even local policy fights into national constitutional battles.
Trump — himself found liable for sexual abuse — has steered clear of criticizing the Catholic Church over its own scandals, instead casting himself as a defender of religion against government overreach. But his relationship with the religious community has not been smooth sailing. The Catholic Church has openly clashed with Trump over his hardline immigration policies. In June, two dozen bishops joined an interfaith coalition to denounce his “Big Beautiful Bill” slashing Medicaid for low-income and disabled Americans, prompting the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to issue one of its sharpest rebukes of his social agenda.
Still, the Trump-era DOJ and the Catholic Church have found common cause in attacking Washington state, even if they don’t agree on where the line should be drawn, forming a rare alliance against one of the first laws in decades to strip away clergy’s confessional shield in child abuse cases. It has turned into a national flashpoint, a constitutional test case watched across the country, poised to redefine the boundary between church and state.
Just weeks before Washington’s new clergy reporting law is set to take effect, Pope Leo XIV issued a rare public reproof of clerical secrecy. In a message read aloud in Lima, Peru — where he spent decades as a missionary — Leo called for a culture of “active vigilance” against all forms of abuse. “This culture,” he wrote, “will only be authentic if it is born of transparent processes and sincere listening to those who have been hurt. For this, we need journalists,” according to Vatican News.
Yet even amid papal calls for a Church rooted in transparency and active vigilance, U.S. church officials are lawyering up to defend secrecy around abuse confessions.
The legal muscle behind the Catholics’ lawsuit makes it clear this is not a local skirmish.
In addition to First Liberty Institute and Seattle-based Crowley Law Offices, the plaintiffs are represented by WilmerHale, a global D.C. firm with a deep bench of constitutional litigators, and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has successfully argued major religious freedom cases before the Supreme Court. The composition of this legal dream team signals intent: They’re engineering a challenge destined to climb the federal judiciary.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, for their part, say they have “closely monitored Washington’s clergy reporting law,” but “have made no decision yet on whether the law should be challenged,” according to spokesman Jarrod Lopes.
But on June 16, the battlefield widened further as a coalition of Orthodox churches filed their own federal lawsuit, arguing Washington’s law forces priests to choose between breaking the confessional seal or facing criminal charges. Represented by the conservative group Alliance Defending Freedom — the same organization behind the law that led to the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision ending the federal right to abortion — they’ll seek an injunction at a July 25 hearing, just two days before the law is set to take effect.
In announcing their lawsuit, the Orthodox Church in America echoed the language of the Catholic bishops and the DOJ, calling Washington’s law “rank religious discrimination.”
Whether this second lawsuit strengthens the broader constitutional challenge, or complicates the Catholic Church’s claim that it is being uniquely targeted, remains to be seen.
What is clear: with two active federal lawsuits and the U.S. Department of Justice now formally intervening on constitutional grounds, the ultimate audience for this battle could well be the U.S. Supreme Court. And the Roberts Court, in 2025, is not the same court that shaped modern religious liberty doctrine. Religious conservatism no longer sits at the fringe; it now occupies the commanding heights of the U.S. judiciary.
As of June 2025, six of the nine justices on the Supreme Court are Catholic: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Neil Gorsuch was raised Catholic but attends an Episcopal church. The remaining two — Justices Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — are Jewish and nondenominational Protestant, respectively.
If challenges to the Washington law wind their way to the highest court in the land, a victory for the plaintiffs could not only invalidate Washington’s law; it could constitutionalize the clergy-penitent privilege, transforming what was once a statutory exemption into a hard limit on state power. That could slam the door on similar reform efforts nationwide, blocking other states from closing similar loopholes, even in the specific context of child abuse. It could use the First Amendment as a vehicle to enshrine a system of legal exceptionalism.
Washington Attorney General Nick Brown’s office did not make officials available for comment, but affirmed by email that it “would obviously defend any legal challenge to this law.”
But the state knows it has a fight on its hands. Brown has privately acknowledged to supporters that the legal terrain is tricky. According to someone familiar with the conversation, Brown told advocates at a private event he wished lawmakers had worked more closely with his office before passing the bill, warning that its narrow focus on clergy could make it hard to defend.
The future of Washington’s freshly minted mandatory reporting law became even more uncertain at a July 14 hearing, just two weeks before it was set to take effect, when Judge David G. Estudillo granted the Justice Department’s request to join the lawsuit.
Four days later, Estudillo dropped the hammer, issuing a preliminary injunction that bars the state from enforcing the requirement that Catholic clergy in the Seattle, Yakima, and Spokane dioceses report child‑abuse disclosures made during confession. That order stays any penalties or prosecutions for priests who honor the confessional seal, leaving the law inoperative for those dioceses until Etienne v. Ferguson plays out in court. (Orthodox churches sued separately and remain subject to Washington’s new law unless they secure their own injunction at a July 25 hearing.)
Together, the two lawsuits, along with the DOJ’s involvement, have made Washington’s law a high-stakes legal test. Whether its promise of ending clergy secrecy in abuse reporting holds, or collapses under constitutional challenge, now rests with the courts.
“Children will continue to suffer because religious leaders they trust are not reporting when children tell them they are being hurt,” says Sen. Frame. “People keep asking me, ‘What happens now?’ What happens is that children who are being abused continue to be abused. Full stop. Period.”
Alex Ashley is a journalist and writer based in Los Angeles and Seattle. His reporting has appeared in Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, NPR, and other national outlets.