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2016 SESSION

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16100549D
HOUSE BILL NO. 906 Offered January 13, 2016 Prefiled January 12, 2016 A BILL to amend and reenact § 8.01-400 of the Code of Virginia, relating to the communications between ministers of religion and persons they counsel or advise. ---------- Patron-- Minchew ---------- Referred to Committee for Courts of Justice ----------

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia:

1. That § 8.01-400 of the Code of Virginia is amended and reenacted as follows:

§ 8.01-400. Communications between ministers of religion and persons they counsel or advise (Supreme Court Rule 2:503 derived in part from this section).

No regular minister, priest, rabbi, or accredited practitioner over the age of eighteen 18 years, of any religious organization or denomination usually referred to as a church, shall be required to give testimony as a witness or to relinquish notes, records, or any written documentation made by such person, or disclose the contents of any such notes, records, or written documentation, in discovery proceedings in any civil action which that would disclose any information communicated to him in a confidential manner, properly entrusted to him in his professional capacity and necessary to enable him to discharge the functions of his office according to the usual course of his practice or discipline, wherein such person so communicating such information about himself or another is seeking spiritual counsel and advice relative to and growing out of the information so imparted; provided further that no such testimony or disclosure by any such minister, priest, rabbi, or accredited practitioner shall be permitted in any civil action over the objection of the person who sought the spiritual counsel or advice and who communicated such information to him in a confidential manner in his professional capacity.