§ 150A.002.Sermons Privileged from Disclosure to Governmental Unit

A single-sentence privilege, and it runs against one class of litigant only.

A governmental unit may not, in any civil action or other civil or administrative proceeding to which the governmental unit is a party, compel the production or disclosure of a written copy or audio or video recording of a sermon delivered by a religious leader during religious worship of a religious organization, or compel the religious leader to testify regarding the sermon.

The bar is asymmetric by design. It restrains governmental units, not private litigants — so a private party in an ordinary civil case is not barred by this section from seeking the same material.

That asymmetry is the chapter’s theory: the concern is government compelling clergy to account for religious teaching, not discovery between private parties.

Both limbs matter, and the second is the broader. The first protects the artifact — the text or recording. The second protects the testimony, so a governmental unit cannot reach the content by deposing the speaker after failing to obtain the document.

"To which the governmental unit is a party" is the operative condition. The bar attaches to the unit’s status as a litigant, whether it is plaintiff or defendant, and reaches administrative proceedings as well as court cases.

The protection is confined to a sermon delivered during religious worship. Statements made outside worship, and communications that are not sermons, fall outside the section — which keeps it narrow enough to withstand the obvious objection that it privileges one speaker over others.

The chapter supplies no exception, no balancing test, and no procedure for overriding the bar.