June 23, 2025

In an alarming assault on religious liberty, the Justice Department has taken decisive action against the State of Washington for enacting Senate Bill 5375—a radical and unconstitutional law that forces Catholic priests to break the sacred seal of Confession or face criminal penalties. This egregious mandate not only threatens the personal convictions and religious duties of priests, who risk immediate excommunication for compliance, but also tramples on the First and Fourteenth Amendments by targeting the deeply held beliefs of millions of faithful Catholics. By singling out the sacrament of Confession while shielding other established privileges, Washington’s law represents a brazen attempt to criminalize core tenets of Christianity. In response, the Justice Department has intervened in federal court to halt this open attack on the free exercise of religion, signaling that it will not stand by while the rights of believers are trampled under the guise of state authority.

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