Nevada
NRS 432B.220; NRS 432B.250; NRS 49.255 — Nevada Protection of Children From Abuse and Neglect (clergy named, confession carve-out)
- Clergy named as mandatory reporter?
- Yes
- Confessional exemption?
- Yes
- Statute
- NRS 432B.220; NRS 432B.250; NRS 49.255
- Clergy named
- Expressly
- Pending
- —
Nevada's child-protection chapter names clergy directly. NRS 432B.220(4)(d) lists 'a member of the clergy, practitioner of Christian Science or religious healer' as a required reporter, and subsection (1) sets a hard 24-hour ceiling on the duty: reports go in as soon as reasonably practicable and not later than 24 hours after the reporter knows or has reasonable cause to believe a child has been abused or neglected. NRS 432B.250 then strips chapter 49 testimonial privileges from any person required to report under 432B.220, both for the report itself and for cooperation with child-welfare agencies and dependency proceedings under NRS 432B.410 to 432B.590. Read together, the reporting floor on the page is strong. The dodge is the closing clause of the same subsection that does the naming. NRS 432B.220(4)(d) ends with the operative qualifier: 'unless the person has acquired the knowledge of the abuse or neglect from the offender during a confession.' The carve-out is narrow on its face (it does not reach third-party disclosures, and it does not reach knowledge gathered outside the confessional context), but it is a complete shield for the most common pastoral scenario, in which the abuser is also the penitent. The evidentiary side runs parallel: NRS 49.255 (Confessor and confessant) bars examining clergy on confessional communications without the penitent's consent, and the 432B.250 anti-privilege rule reaches only the privileges the underlying duty itself reaches. The 2023 legislature revisited the regime in Assembly Bill 158 and restated the same shape: 24-hour duty, named clergy, offender-confession carve-out. The Nevada Division of Child and Family Services policy 300.06 trains facility and parole staff against the 432B.220 list, treating the carve-out as the operating rule, not an outlier reading. Nevada is one of the states where the most decisive disclosure pathway, the perpetrator's own admission to clergy, sits behind a clause that has not changed in the two most recent legislative passes through chapter 432B. UCO's work is to keep that clause on the agenda until it does.