Confessional privilege (United States)en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessional_privilege_(United_States)
In United States law, confessional privilege is a rule of evidence that forbids the inquiry into the content or even existence of certain communications between clergy and communicants.
It grows out of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the common law, and statutory enactments which may vary between jurisdictions.
A priest, Father Jeffrey Bayhi, pastor of St. John the Baptist Church, in Zachary, Louisiana, in the Diocese of Baton Rouge, may face having to choose between excommunication and agreeing to judicial orders to testify about what he heard in the confessional from a 14-year-old girl regarding an abuse case. He lost to the parents at the district court level, he prevailed at the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeals, but he lost once it ended up at the Louisiana Supreme Court (which ruled that even priests are subject to mandatory reporting laws if the penitent has waived confidentiality). The Diocese disagrees, citing the absolute and total confidentiality required of priests in church law and the fact that the seal has largely been honored in U.S. and state law up until now, even, it should be noted, in the midst of the American priest sex abuse crisis when U.S. bishops were dealing with how to respond adequately to such cases while not violating the seal. The Diocese has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and stay the ruling and hear the case and reverse the state Supreme Court's decision.[3]