Source: United States Attorneys General
The Justice Department announced today that it filed legal action for a complaint in intervention against the State of Washington over its a new state law, Senate Bill 5375, which violates the free exercise of religion for all Catholics, and requires Catholic priests to violate the confidentiality seal of Confession.
Senate Bill 5375 requires Catholic priests to violate their vows to uphold the confidentiality seal that accompanies the sacred rite of Confession, subjecting them to immediate excommunication from the Catholic Church.
As the Justice Department’s lawsuit explains, the violations imposed by this new law on all practicing members of the Catholic Church, including Catholic priests administering the sacrament and Catholic penitents participating in the rite, include deprivations of the Free Exercise of Religion under the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
“Laws that explicitly target religious practices such as the Sacrament of Confession in the Catholic Church have no place in our society,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Senate Bill 5375 unconstitutionally forces Catholic priests in Washington to choose between their obligations to the Catholic Church and their penitents or face criminal consequences, while treating the priest-penitent privilege differently than other well-settled privileges. The Justice Department will not sit idly by when States mount attacks on the free exercise of religion.”
The Department’s motion to intervene in Etienne v. Ferguson is pending before the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
More information about the Civil Rights Division and the laws it enforces is available at www.justice.gov/crt.