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 graded willful failure to report from a second-degree misdemeanor at baseline up to a felony (third- or second-degree depending on continuing-failure and underlying-abuse conditions). The reporting floor is strong on the page. The carveout sits inside § 6311.1: subsection (a) declares that privilege does not relieve the duty to report, and subsection (b)(1) then cross-references 42 Pa.C.S. § 5943, preserving confidential clergy communications intact. Pennsylvania appellate decisions read § 5943 narrowly, confining the privilege to genuinely religious or confessional exchanges. The current institutional pressure is the Ivy Hill litigation, where a congregation has argued that elder-to-elder reports of abuse should fall inside § 5943's protection. UCO tracks Pennsylvania because the structural shape (strong-sounding override, reinstated one subsection later by cross-reference) is a recurring template UCO is pushing to close, in Pennsylvania and every state running the same play.