Are Mormon Bishops Required to Report Abuse?

Ask the question and you'll get a confident yes or an outraged no. Both are wrong — the real answer depends on which of fifty states the bishop is standing in, and the map is redrawing itself right now.

By Todd Noall · Mormonism Explained · Updated August 11, 2026

Before We Begin

This article discusses child sexual abuse. It contains no graphic detail. If you or someone you know needs help, call or text the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453, the RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673, or 911 in an emergency. The Church's own resource page is at churchofjesuschrist.org/get-help/abuse.

Key Facts — The 60-Second Version

  • Whether a Mormon bishop must report abuse depends entirely on the state. About half of U.S. states make clergy mandatory reporters; most of those exempt confidential religious confessions.
  • A minority of states — including New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Texas and West Virginia — require clergy to report even confessional disclosures.
  • The clergy-penitent privilege is state law, not a church policy, and protects every faith's confidential religious communications — Catholic, Protestant, and Latter-day Saint alike.
  • The map is moving: Washington's 2025 law removed then partly restored the confessional exemption after litigation and a federal settlement; the U.S. DOJ opened a civil-rights inquiry.
  • Church policy instructs leaders to fulfill all legal reporting duties, to never disregard a report of abuse, and to never counsel anyone not to report criminal activity.

Ask "are Mormon bishops required to report abuse?" and you'll get a confident yes or an outraged no, depending on who's answering. Both are wrong, because the honest answer is the one nobody wants: it depends on which of fifty states the bishop is standing in — and the map is redrawing itself right now.

This is a guide to that map. Not the Church's framing, not its critics' framing — the actual law, state by state, and the genuine policy debate underneath it. Because the confusion here isn't accidental. Two different legal duties get blended into one accusation, and separating them is the whole game.

Two Duties, Constantly Confused

Almost every misleading claim about Mormon bishops and reporting comes from collapsing two distinct legal questions into one:

Mandatory Reporting

A duty to affirmatively report suspected abuse to authorities. Applies to teachers, doctors, and — in about half of states — clergy.

Clergy-Penitent Privilege

A protection that shields confidential religious confession from being compelled or, in many states, from the reporting duty.

Mandatory Reporting

Question: must you tell?

Clergy-Penitent Privilege

Question: is this particular conversation exempt?

Mandatory Reporting

Grows broader over time — 18+ states now require all adults to report.

Clergy-Penitent Privilege

Belongs to the penitent, not the clergy, in most states; the confessor generally decides whether to waive it.
Both are written into state law. Sources: Child Welfare Information Gateway; state statutes; MinistryWatch and Stateline reporting-law surveys (2023–2026).

A bishop can be a mandatory reporter and have a specific confession fall inside the privilege — both true at once. That's not a loophole the Church invented; it's the structure of clergy-reporting law in most of the country, and it applies identically to a Catholic priest and a Protestant pastor.

The Map

Here is the national picture, sorted into the four categories a Kirton McConkie legal analysis uses. The colors are the law; the debate is what to do about it.

Child-abuse reporting statutes by state, drawn as a grid of square state tiles in four colours. 5 states plus D.C. do not require clergy to report at all; 27 states exempt clergy if the information came in a confidential communication; 5 states exempt clergy only for a confession by the perpetrator; 13 states require clergy to report regardless of privilege or confidentiality.

The four categories: 5 states and D.C. do not require clergy to report at all; ~27 exempt clergy where the information came in a confidential communication; ~5 exempt clergy only for a confession by the perpetrator; a growing group — including NH, NC, OK, RI, TX and WV, with WA in 2025 flux — require a report regardless of privilege. Categories per a Kirton McConkie reporting-statute analysis; reconciled with AP's count of 33 states maintaining some clergy exemption, MinistryWatch (Jan. 2026), and the Child Welfare Information Gateway. State-level assignments carry the source's own draft stamp and must be verified against childwelfare.gov and each statute — this landscape changed materially in 2025.

The Map Is Moving: Washington, 2025

If you want proof this is a live legislative battlefield and not a settled Church talking point, watch what happened in Washington State in 2025. The legislature passed Senate Bill 5375, making clergy mandatory reporters with no exemption for confession. Then the litigation came — and it ended in a constitutional ruling, not a compromise. In Etienne v. Ferguson, a federal court declared the law unconstitutional under the Free Exercise Clause: it was neither neutral nor generally applicable, because it singled out clergy for harsher treatment than similarly situated professionals. The U.S. Department of Justice had opened a civil-rights inquiry into the same law. On October 10, 2025, the court entered a stipulated permanent injunction — the confessional exemption is back by court order, while clergy remain mandatory reporters outside the confessional.

Verified

Etienne v. Ferguson, 791 F. Supp. 3d 1226 (W.D. Wash. 2025), and stipulated permanent injunction, October 10, 2025.

That sequence is the whole debate in miniature: a legislature moving to close the exemption, a constitutional fight over religious free exercise, and a compromise that keeps clergy reporting while protecting the seal of confession. Several states are running versions of the same play. Any article — including ours — that hands you a fixed number of exemption states is a snapshot of a moving target, which is why this page carries a verification date and gets updated.

The Other Shoe: Arizona, July 30, 2026

Twelve days before this update, the map's most-watched case reached its end-stage. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled unanimously in the Adams litigation, reversing a 2025 appeals decision that had revived the case on a waiver theory. The court held that the clergy-penitent privilege is a testimonial privilege — separate from the reporting statute's exemption — and that the exemption turns on the clergy's own religious determination of what constitutes a confidential communication, a determination civil courts cannot second-guess. It is a ruling about who decides, not a merits verdict, and the case returns to the lower courts. But the doctrinal consequence is large: in Arizona, the reach of the confessional exemption is now defined by the church's sincere religious framework, not by a jury's reconstruction of it. Reformers who want a different answer have one clear path, and it runs through the legislature — which is this article's whole point. We break down the ruling, the opposite-direction Oregon lawsuit, and the privilege itself in a standalone explainer. VERIFIED

What the Church Tells Its Bishops

Inside that shifting legal patchwork, what does Latter-day Saint policy actually instruct? The published guidance is unusually direct, and it is the opposite of a concealment directive:

"If you learn of abuse, you should immediately contact legal authorities" — and then counsel with a bishop, who calls the help line for guidance in meeting reporting requirements.

Children and Youth Protection Training, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The General Handbook adds two absolutes: never disregard a report of abuse, and never counsel a person not to report criminal activity. And §32.4.4 writes a ceiling into confidentiality itself: a bishop may break it when "necessary to prevent life-threatening harm or serious injury," because "the duty to protect others is more important than the duty of confidentiality." That exception operates in the real world — in Oregon, a mandatory-reporting state, clergy reported a member's confession to authorities, and in 2020 the member's wife sued the Church for reporting it. The Church has now been sued for not reporting where state law privileged a confession, and for reporting where state law required it. The help line exists precisely because a volunteer bishop cannot be expected to know his own state's reporting law cold — its job is to route him to the right legal answer for his jurisdiction, and to report directly when a child is in imminent danger. We examined that system in depth in Inside the Abuse Helpline.

The Real Debate — Steelmanned Both Ways

Should the confessional exemption exist at all? This is a genuine values conflict, and serious people land on both sides. We'll give each its strongest form:

Abolish the Exemption

No confession should outrank a child's safety. If a perpetrator confesses ongoing abuse, the law that keeps clergy silent is a law that leaves children in danger. Survivors and reformers argue the seal has shielded abusers for generations.

Preserve the Privilege

Legal scholarship (Mitchell, 1987) argues that abolishing the seal doesn't produce reports — it produces silence: perpetrators simply stop confessing, so the abuse that clergy privilege currently surfaces never comes to light at all. Remove the safe channel and you may learn about less abuse, not more.

That second argument is counterintuitive — and it is no longer just Mitchell's. A 2014 peer-reviewed study found states mandating clergy reports had statistically significant lower confirmed-report rates than states without the mandate; a 2016 follow-up found law changes didn't raise confirmed reports; and after Maryland mandated psychiatrist reporting in 1989, perpetrator self-referrals to Johns Hopkins's clinic collapsed to nearly zero. (Sources: Vandervort & Palusci 2014; Palusci, Vandervort & Lewis 2016; Berlin, Psychiatric Times 2014 — compiled in Cassell's 2026 response paper, which credits Kirton McConkie attorneys for help-line information, a connection we disclose.) It remains contested, and it's the crux of the Church's public position: that the protected space of confession brings more abuse to light than a mandatory-disclosure rule would, because it's the one place some perpetrators will ever speak. Critics respond that this is convenient for institutions and unprovable either way — which is fair, and which is why the honest version of this debate is about a genuine empirical uncertainty, not a cartoon of villains and heroes. It is a legislative question, being fought out in statehouses, and this publication treats both sides as sincere.

The question isn't whether Mormon bishops follow the law. In every case that reached a court, they did. The question is what the law should be — and that's a fight in fifty statehouses, not one church.

The Bounded Verdict

Are Mormon bishops required to report abuse? In some states, always; in others, unless it came through confession; the line is drawn by legislatures, not by the Church, and it applies to every faith. Church policy inside that patchwork tells leaders to contact authorities, never to disregard a report, and never to counsel silence — and every court to examine a bishop's conduct under these laws has found it lawful. The live controversy isn't Latter-day Saint compliance; it's whether the confessional exemption should survive at all — a real debate, with a real empirical uncertainty at its heart, now being decided state by state. Anyone who reduces that to "Mormon bishops don't report abuse" has skipped both the law and the argument.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are Mormon bishops required to report abuse?

It depends on the state. Clergy are mandatory reporters in about half of U.S. states, but most exempt confidential confession; a minority (NH, NC, OK, RI, TX, WV) require reporting even of confessional disclosures. Church policy: fulfill all legal duties, never disregard a report, never counsel anyone not to report.

What is the clergy-penitent privilege?

A state-law protection shielding confidential religious confession from compelled testimony or, in many states, from mandatory reporting. It covers Catholic confession, Protestant counseling, and Latter-day Saint bishop interviews alike — not one faith.

Did any states change clergy reporting laws in 2025?

Yes. Washington enacted a law making clergy mandatory reporters with no confessional exemption; a federal court declared it unconstitutional (Etienne v. Ferguson) and entered a permanent injunction restoring confessional protections in October 2025, while clergy remain reporters otherwise. The U.S. DOJ had opened a civil-rights inquiry. And on July 30, 2026, the Arizona Supreme Court unanimously ruled courts cannot second-guess a church's religious determination of what is confidential. The map is actively shifting.

What did the Arizona Supreme Court rule about clergy reporting in 2026?

On July 30, 2026, the Arizona Supreme Court unanimously held that the clergy-penitent privilege is a testimonial privilege separate from the reporting statute, and that the reporting exemption turns on the clergy's own religious determination of what is a confidential communication — which courts cannot second-guess. It reversed a 2025 appeals ruling and returned the Adams case to the lower courts. It is a ruling about who decides, not a merits verdict.

Sources

Child Welfare Information Gateway, "Clergy as Mandatory Reporters of Child Abuse and Neglect" · Kirton McConkie reporting-statute analysis (2022) · MinistryWatch (Jan. 2026) · Stateline (2023) · Etienne v. Ferguson, 791 F. Supp. 3d 1226 (W.D. Wash. 2025) and stipulated permanent injunction (Oct. 10, 2025) · Arizona Supreme Court ruling coverage: Religion News Service (Aug. 4, 2026); AZFamily, Arizona Mirror (Jul. 30, 2026) · Vandervort & Palusci (2014); Palusci, Vandervort & Lewis (2016); Berlin, Psychiatric Times (2014) · Paul G. Cassell, response paper (2026; disclosure: credits Kirton McConkie attorneys for help-line information) · General Handbook §§32.4.4–32.4.5 · CNN (Jan. 10, 2020) · Washington State Standard and America Magazine on SB 5375 (2025) · Mitchell, "Must Clergy Tell? Child Abuse Reporting Requirements versus the Clergy Privilege" (1987) · Children and Youth Protection Training and General Handbook, churchofjesuschrist.org. Facts current as of July 20, 2026, per our corrections policy.

Related

Inside the Abuse Helpline

Two attorneys who answered the line — both abuse survivors — describe what actually happens when a bishop calls.

The Clergy-Penitent Privilege

Sued in Arizona for staying silent, sued in Oregon for speaking up — what the privilege is and what the Handbook actually says.

The Abuse Files

Our hub for the whole investigation: the lawsuits, the data, and what the evidence actually shows.

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