This article originally appeared in the Thomas More Society 2025 Impact Report. To explore the full Impact Report, click here.

When Washington legislators passed Senate Bill 5375 in spring 2025, they forced Catholic priests into a terrible position: violate the sacred seal of Confession and face automatic excommunication from the Church, or refuse to comply with state law and face criminal penalties. It was an untenable choice, and a brazen intrusion by the state into matters that belong solely to the Church and Her jurisdiction.

Bishop Robert Barron—founder of the international Word on Fire ministry, and one of the most influential Catholic leaders in the United States—recognized the threat immediately. Writing in Fox News, he recalled a similar fight years earlier, as an auxiliary bishop in Los Angeles, California: “I remember saying, ‘Brothers, I think we have to draw a line in the sand on this one.’” The California legislators backed down. Washington State’s would not.

As the Catholic bishops of Washington mounted a legal challenge, Thomas More Society gave Bishop Barron a voice in the fight. TMS Senior Counsel Michael McHale authored an amicus brief on the Bishop’s behalf, urging a federal court to strike down SB 5375 as an egregious violation of the Free Exercise Clause. The brief laid bare the law’s discriminatory design: its text singled out “members of the clergy”—and only clergy—for disfavored treatment, stripping them from a privileged communications exemption that continued to protect attorneys, spouses, and others. The bill’s sponsor had brazenly declared that religious communities must “change their rules” if their doctrine conflicts with state law.

At the heart of the brief was the sacrament itself. Catholics believe that in the confessional, the priest acts in the very person of Christ, and the penitent confesses directly to the Lord Himself. What transpires in that encounter is, as Bishop Barron wrote, “from a spiritual standpoint, a matter of life and death. If there were, on the part of a prospective penitent, even the slightest suspicion that what he confesses might be shared publicly, he would not seek out this font of grace and the integrity of the sacrament would be utterly compromised.”

The brief’s arguments made an immediate impact. At the preliminary injunction hearing, the court’s opening question drew directly from the line of reasoning McHale had laid out in the amicus. “Catholics should be outraged that the state should seek to limit a penitent’s access to the font of Grace,” Bishop Barron declared. “And in fact, all Americans should stand against this egregious violation of the First Amendment.”

On October 10, 2025, Washington state officials agreed to a permanent injunction declaring that SB 5375 violates the Free Exercise Clause—a total victory for religious liberty and a clear affirmation that the state has no authority to dictate how the Church governs Her own sacraments. “Legislators who think they can target disfavored religious practices with impunity should take note,” said McHale. “This law failed, and it failed decisively.”