Pennsylvania
23 Pa.C.S. §§ 6311, 6311.1, 6319 — Pennsylvania Child Protective Services Law
- Clergy named as mandatory reporter?
- Yes
- Confessional exemption?
- Yes
- Statute
- 23 Pa.C.S. §§ 6311, 6311.1, 6319
- Clergy named
- Expressly
- Pending
- —
Pennsylvania's Child Protective Services Law names clergy directly. Section 6311(a)(6) lists 'a clergyman, priest, rabbi, minister, Christian Science practitioner, religious healer or spiritual leader' as mandated reporters. Act 88 of 2019 raised the penalty for a continuing failure to report from a first-degree misdemeanor to a third-degree felony, or a second-degree felony where the underlying abuse is a first-degree felony or higher, and stiffened the repeat-offense grading. The second-degree-misdemeanor baseline in § 6319(a) dates from Act 32 of 2014. The reporting floor is strong on the page. The confessional shield is not a single line, though, and that is why deleting one cross-reference will not close it. Section 6311.1(a) says privilege does not relieve the duty to report, but by its own terms it abrogates only the privilege 'between a mandated reporter and a patient or client,' and a penitent is neither. Section 6311.1(b)(1) points to 42 Pa.C.S. § 5943, and § 5943 is a free-standing evidence statute: it bars a clergy member from being compelled or allowed, without the speaker's consent, to disclose a confidential communication in any legal proceeding, trial, or investigation before a government unit. Because that bar operates on its own force in any government investigation or court proceeding, deleting the reporting law's pointer to § 5943 does not remove it from the child-abuse case a report leads to. A separate provision, § 6381(c), independently excepts communications 'between a minister and a penitent' from the rule that otherwise strips privilege in child-abuse proceedings, and the DHS regulation at 55 Pa. Code § 3490.14 restates the carveout. Pennsylvania appellate decisions read § 5943 narrowly, confining the privilege to genuinely religious or confessional exchanges, but the Ivy Hill litigation, where a congregation argues that its lay elders qualify as clergy, shows institutions will press it. UCO tracks Pennsylvania because the structural shape, a strong-sounding override reinstated elsewhere in the code, is a template UCO is pushing to close, in Pennsylvania and every state running the same play.