SEATTLE (WA)
Snopes [San Diego CA]
August 8, 2025
By Rae Deng
In July, a judge temporarily blocked the Washington state law from going into effect while the court case proceeded.
- In summer 2025, a rumor spread online that U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration moved to overturn a law requiring Catholic priests to report child abuse.
- It is true that the Trump administration joined a lawsuit against a Washington state law adding religious clergy to the list of “mandatory reporters,” a group of professions legally required to report suspected child abuse. However, the administration’s issue with the law focused on a provision that would require Catholic priests to report child abuse when they learn the information through confession — a Catholic rite in which a penitent confesses sins to a priest, who vows complete confidentiality.
- As of this writing, it was not clear whether a ruling in favor of the administration would overturn the entire law or the specific part requiring religious clergy — and no other types of mandated reporters — to share “privileged communications” when the information learned indicates child abuse. It is worth noting that the law did not single out Catholic priests alone and instead would have imposed these requirements on all religious clergy, such as Jewish rabbis and Muslim imams.
- On July 18, a federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of the specific provision that requires priests to report child abuse learned through confession. As of this writing, the rest of the law adding clergy as mandated reporters remained in effect, the Washington attorney general’s office said.
According to a rumor spreading online in summer 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration does not think clergy should have to report child abuse.
Posts on X, Facebook, Reddit and Instagram claimed that Trump moved to block a law requiring Catholic priests to report child abuse. While many posts did not specify whether the administration sought to bar a federal or state law from going into effect, some alleged that the law in question had passed in Washington state. Snopes readers also searched the website for information on Trump “overturning” or “repealing” a law on clergy reporting requirements regarding child sex abuse.
The Department of Justice did, in fact, join a lawsuit brought by Roman Catholic bishops and priests against a Washington state law, signed by Democratic state Gov. Bob Ferguson in May, that requires priests to report child abuse or neglect. However, the Trump administration’s issue with the law largely focused on the provision requiring priests to report child abuse when disclosed in confession.
Confession is a rite sacred to Catholics in which they confess their sins to a priest, who must keep absolute secrecy under church law — or face automatic excommunication, or banishment, from the church.
As of this writing, it was not clear whether a ruling in favor of the administration would overturn the entire law or the specific part of it in dispute. On July 18, a federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of the specific provision that requires priests to report child abuse learned through confession. The rest of the law took effect on July 27.
The Department of Justice did not answer clarifying questions sent by Snopes, instead referring only to the court filings. Nina Jenkins, a spokesperson with the Washington attorney general’s office, said the office was “not really in a position to speculate on what a hypothetical final court ruling would look like.”
“Only judges know what specifically their judgments are going to say or stipulate,” Jenkins said in an email.
Clergy as ‘mandated reporters’
Washington state Senate Bill 5375 added clergy members to the state’s list of professions legally required to report suspected child abuse to law enforcement or state authorities, known as “mandated reporters.”
While state law previously allowed that no mandated reporter had to report child abuse or neglect when obtained through a “privileged communication,” SB 5375 carved out an exception to that rule for clergy — thus requiring clergy to report instances of child abuse and neglect, regardless of whether the information was obtained through a sacred religious rite such as confession.
Here’s the relevant language of the bill (see Page 6), with underlined language indicating the parts of the preexisting law the act amended (bold emphasis ours):
Sec. 2. RCW 26.44.030 and 2024 c 298 s 6 are each amended to read as follows:
(1)(a) When any member of the clergy, practitioner, county coroner or medical examiner, law enforcement officer […] has reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or neglect, he or she shall report such incident, or cause a report to be made, to the proper law enforcement agency or to the department as provided in RCW 26.44.040.38
(b) When any person, in his or her official supervisory capacity with a nonprofit or for-profit organization, has reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or neglect caused by a person over whom he or she regularly exercises supervisory authority, he or she shall report such incident, or cause a report to be made, to the proper law enforcement agency, provided that the person alleged to have caused the abuse or neglect is employed by, contracted by, or volunteers with the organization and coaches, trains, educates, or counsels a child or children or regularly has unsupervised access to a child or children as part of the employment, contract, or voluntary service. ((No)) Except for members of the clergy, no one shall be required to report under this section when he or she obtains the information solely as a result of a privileged communication as provided in RCW 5.60.060
The legislation applied not just to Catholic priests, but all “members of the clergy,” defined by the bill to include regularly licensed, accredited, or ordained religious or spiritual leaders of any church, including ministers, priests, rabbis, imams and elders (Page 4). The lead sponsor of the bill, Democratic state Sen. Noel Frame told the media she introduced the legislation after reading a report about allegations that state law made it easier for a Jehovah’s Witness congregation to cover up decades of child sexual abuse by an elder.
The judge’s July 18 ruling specifically prevented the state from enforcing SB 5375 “as to the Sacrament of Confession,” meaning that the part of the legislation deeming clergy members as mandated reporters remained in effect as of this writing, a fact further confirmed via an emailed response from the state attorney general’s office.
However, that does not mean that anything a person says to a priest outside of a confessional booth becomes reportable to the authorities. The Rev. Bryan Pham, a canon lawyer — an expert in Catholic law — said in a phone call that confession can happen anywhere and a penitent does not have to follow a specific formula to trigger the seal of confession. Priests, Pham said, are trained to identify what is said as a confessional and what is not — and to clarify with a penitent if the priest is in doubt.
Many states have listed clergy as mandated reporters. While most states have carved out exceptions for confession, several states already required clergy who learn of child abuse in religious rites such as confession to report it.
Trump administration joins lawsuit
Roman Catholic bishops and priests from the state filed suit against SB 5375 on May 29, 2025, arguing that Washington targeted the Roman Catholic Church in a “brazen act of religious discrimination,” and violated the First Amendment of the Constitution, which protects the “free exercise” of religion (pages 6 and 32).
On June 23, the Department of Justice announced in a news release that it would join the lawsuit, echoing the bishops’ arguments in a bid to block the legislation from taking effect. The lawsuit largely focused on the right for Catholic priests to maintain the seal of confession.
“SB 5375 directly interferes with the fundamental right of Catholic priests to freely exercise their religion by forcing them to violate the sanctity and confidentiality of confessional communications,” the government wrote on Page 4.
But the administration stated that it does not “challenge the inclusion of priests as mandatory reporters per se” (Page 5). In other words, the federal government does not appear to issue with the part of the law adding priests as mandatory reporters, just with the provision that would require them to break the seal of confession.
The Justice Department previously opened a civil-rights investigation into SB 5375 in May to examine “the apparent conflict between Washington State’s new law with the free exercise of religion under the First Amendment, a cornerstone of the United States Constitution.”
The July 18 ruling against the legislation from U.S. District Judge David G. Estudillo constituted a preliminary injunction, a court order issued to maintain status quo while litigation proceeds. As of this writing, the courts have not released a final ruling on the legislation’s constitutionality, but Estudillo wrote in his injunction decision that he believed the plaintiffs in the case “are likely to succeed” (Page 2).
While the federal government has focused on the bill’s effects for Catholic priests, Washington state authorities told the court that if it determined the law may be unconstitutional in a preliminary injunction, the state would not enforce it for any clergy “as it applies to confessions or sacred confidences” while the order remains in force (Page 2).
What happens if judge sides with White House?
Experts differed on their read of what might happen if the courts ruled in favor of the Trump administration. David Super, a constitutional law expert at Georgetown Law, said he suspected that if the administration wins its case, “it would only be a surgical change to the legislation, rather than completely eliminating it.”
“The general principle is that the courts will only invalidate the unconstitutional provisions — unless it appears that the legislature would not have wanted the law to go into effect without the other provisions,” Super said, adding that he believes the Washington Legislature “almost certainly” would want the rest of the law to go into effect, even if the courts deem the section affecting confession as unconstitutional.
Super also said the Trump administration’s brief appeared to focus largely on the seal of confession and not any wider concerns, suggesting the federal government is not seeking to challenge the rest of the law.
But Pham, the canon lawyer, disagreed. Pham, also a law professor and chaplain to the law school at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, said that while state law did not explicitly list priests as mandatory reporters before SB 5375, much of the work that clergy engage in — such as at schools and youth-involved organizations — require priests to be mandatory reporters already.
As such, Pham believes the law, in its entirety, singles out Catholic clergy and “should the court rule against SB5375, the entire law would be struck.”
“Legal scholars and practitioners can have opinions and points of views … but nothing is done until the court issues a final saying,” Pham said in an email.
In sum …
After Washington state passed a law requiring priests to report suspected child abuse, even during sacred religious rites such as confession, the Trump administration joined a lawsuit against the law, taking issue with the specific provision requiring Catholic priests to break the seal of confession. However, whether the judge might rule to overturn the entire law or the section affecting confession remained in question as of this writing.
Rae Deng specializes in government/politics and is based in Tacoma, Wash.