Olympia, Washington, October 13, 2025
Photo: adfmedia.org
Washington state officials have agreed to a permanent court order preventing enforcement of a law that would have criminalized priests for maintaining the confidentiality of Confession, four months after Orthodox Churches filed a federal lawsuit challenging the legislation.
The settlement in Orthodox Church in America v. Ferguson permanently stops the state from enforcing the law as applied to the Sacrament of Confession and other sacred confidences, according to Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the plaintiffs alongside co-counsel Eric Kniffin and George Ahrend.
“The First Amendment guarantees that governments cannot single out religious believers for worse treatment,” said ADF Senior Counsel and Vice President of Appellate Advocacy John Bursch. “Washington was targeting priests by compelling them to break the sacred confidentiality of confession while protecting other confidential communications, like those between attorneys and their clients. That’s rank religious discrimination.”
The challenged law, passed in May, would have made it a crime for priests to uphold Confession confidentiality while maintaining similar privileges for attorneys, peer supporters, sexual assault advocates, and alcohol and drug recovery sponsors. A single violation carried penalties of up to 364 days in jail, a $5,000 fine, and civil liability.
Four Orthodox jurisdictions filed the lawsuit in June: the Orthodox Church in America, the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, the Romanian Orthodox Metropolia of the Americas, and the Western American Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.
Orthodox teaching holds that priests have a strict religious duty to maintain the absolute confidentiality of what is disclosed in the sacrament of confession. Violating this obligation is considered a canonical crime and grave sin, with severe consequences for the offending priest, including removal from the priesthood.
In July, U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca L. Pennell granted a preliminary injunction blocking the law from taking effect. The new agreement makes that protection permanent.
All 50 states, including Washington, have traditionally honored the confidentiality of clergy-penitent communications as part of common law tradition. Washington’s mandatory reporter law had recognized a clergy-penitent privilege until the passage of the challenged legislation.
The Orthodox Churches emphasized in their lawsuit that they do not object to alerting authorities when they have genuine concerns about children based on information learned outside the confidentiality of confession. Priests are already required to make such reports under their bishops’ policies for information learned outside of Confession.
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