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A law removing long-standing rights isn't likely to stand. I'm unsure how it works with JWs, but the practice of Catholic confessions (behind a screen in a dark room, anonymous option) nullifies testimony. Are sexual offenders going to testify that they confessed their sins and then the priest didn't provide testimony to the state? Will the state be bugging confessionals?
Should Washington state consider revoking other privileged positions? Why should spouse, lawyer and doctor be exempt?
Edit: Reading the text of the law there is more leagalise to parse through in regards to the responsibilities of medical personnel if understand it correctly https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2025-26/Pdf/Bills/Senate%20Passed%20Legislature/5375.PL.pdf#page=1
While I understand that privilege has a precise legal situation, where a defendent themselves can claim it, I don't know if the legislators are thinking of it that way. I believe the point is they want priests to testify, if they find out some accused person has a confessor, they want to be able to compel that priest to testify in court. Not a lawyer, but I suspect you're right, and this wouldn't stand up as evidence in a real courtroom. But Washington wants that power, the legislature despises that religions allow people to confess a serious crime to a spiritual leader without that spiritual leader having to report it. Mandatory reporting rules are probably the ultimate target; apparently there was a court case in Louisiana about that topic.
Of course, the view of the Catholic Church is that priests should be willing to be imprisoned or die, even, rather than reveal something told to them in the confessional. A priest who does it is supposed to be punished severely -- the old Lateran canon said they would be imprisoned, basically, in a monastery for life as penance, and more recent canon law is simply excommunication. The moral theologians argued that a priest should lie and say they know nothing when asked about a person's sins.
Personally, I think this could become an asylum situation. This is probably a strength of the temporal power of the Pope. Before it was abused by economic migrants, the concept of asylum was supposed to apply to situations like this: where the laws of the state penalize or compel activity that it shouldn't against a specific targeted person. I've read that applications for ending the excommunication of a person who commits a sin that incurs automatic excommunication (abortion, apostasy, eucharistic desecration, etc) are often sent in diplomatic pouches. So the principle of the Pope using international law to protect the seal of the confessional is already in use.
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The question for the state is always "why should anyone be exempt"; the state, representing society and thus being morally paramount, surely has a compelling interest in preventing crimes that overrides any mere personal bonds. The limits of this are whether priests, doctors, spouses, and lawyers will spill rather than be held in contempt, and whether the state has the capacity to hold them until they spill. With ever-increasing state capacity, doctor-patient privilege has pretty much been nuked in criminal matters; doctors have gone from privileged to mandatory-report, and of course their own ethics boards cheered along with this. Spousal privilege can in practice be broken when children are involved; the state can move to take the children away and promise to stop if the silent spouse testifies. Lawyer privilege has held better, because lawyers are in a better position to defend it, making up a large part of the system as they do.
Priest privilege has mostly held because Catholic priests are really stubborn about it, as in not-yielding-under-torture stubborn. But with the decline of religion, they may well lose enough public support that routinely tossing old Father McGee in jail forever because he won't testify against Chester the Molestor will be fine, and eventually they'll yield too.
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Sorry, I should've been clearer. My point about JWs was that they are now falling under state scrutiny even though they are small fish compared to Catholics. If the eye of the state can fall upon them to the point they are being used as a partial example for new legislation, then the same could easily happen to the Amish.
Based on lawsuits I've seen in other states, I think this is the route that victims' rights advocates have in mind:
Currently, #4 is being blocked due to pastors not being mandatory reporters. By removing the clergy-penitent privilege and making pastors into mandatory reporters, then it would open churches to liability if they fail to report.
I don’t think you’re quite understanding mandatory reporter laws. Everyone is technically required to report, absent specific circumstances(confessor/lawyer privilege, 5th amendment grounds, etc). Mandatory reporters are further subject to time and formatting requirements.
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