Montana
Mont. Code Ann. § 41-3-201 — Montana child-abuse reporting statute (clergy named, doctrine and practice carveout)
- Clergy named as mandatory reporter?
- Yes
- Confessional exemption?
- Yes
- Statute
- Mont. Code Ann. § 41-3-201
- Clergy named
- Expressly
- Pending
- —
Montana's reporting statute names clergy directly. Section 41-3-201(2)(h) lists 'a member of the clergy, as defined in 15-6-201(2)(b)' among professionals and officials required to report suspected child abuse or neglect. The penalty grade is unusually firm: under HB 640 (2019), purposeful or knowing failure to report sexual abuse or sexual exploitation is a felony punishable by up to five years in state prison, a fine of up to $10,000, or both, with the criminal statute of limitations eliminated for sex crimes against victims under 18. The reporting floor sounds strong on the page. The carveout lives two subsections later, in the same statute. Subsection (6)(b) exempts a clergy member from reporting when the knowledge came from a statement or confession made in clergy capacity, was intended to be confidential, and the speaker does not consent to disclosure. Subsection (6)(c) extends the exemption to any communication 'required to be confidential by canon law, church doctrine, or established church practice.' The three prongs work together, and in Nunez the court rested on doctrine, canon, and practice as a set rather than on practice alone. The 'established church practice' prong is the most permissive of the three, since it turns on what a denomination has chosen to do internally, with no procedural burden on the clergyperson to substantiate the claim. That is why the repeal has to reach the whole of subsection (6)(c) rather than that phrase alone. In Nunez v. Watchtower (2020 MT 3), the Montana Supreme Court used that carveout to reverse a $35M jury verdict against Jehovah's Witnesses. The parties agreed the elders were clergy under Montana law; whether they were nonetheless mandated reporters was the contested question, and the case turned on whether the church's doctrine, canon, or established practice required the disclosures to be kept confidential under (6)(c). The court held it did, as a matter of law. The 2025 legislature tried to close it. Sen. Mary Ann Dunwell's SB 139 would have stricken (6)(b) and (6)(c) outright; the Senate Judiciary Committee tabled it 7-2 on January 29, 2025, and the bill died in process on May 23. A negotiated amendment, preserving canon-law and doctrine carveouts but eliminating the 'established church practice' prong, was on the table and never advanced. Montana is one of the states where a state supreme court has already construed the carveout broadly, and where the legislative fix died 7-2 in committee inside a single session. The work is keeping the § 41-3-201(6)(c) carveout on the legislative agenda until a future session closes it.