Is Peer Support Actually Confidential? What Courts Say

You’ve heard it before a critical incident debrief even starts: “Everything said in this room stays in this room.” For a lot of cops and firefighters, that promise is the only reason they open up at all. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: in some courtrooms, that promise hasn’t held.

Two Courtrooms, One Hard Lesson

In Huffman v. City of Boston, officers who attended mandatory critical incident stress debriefings after the May 2020 protests were later ordered to testify about what was said in those sessions. In December 2023, a federal magistrate judge found the city hadn’t shown the discussions were privileged — in part because the sessions were group debriefings led by a social worker, not one-on-one counseling.

A month later in Washington State, it happened again. After Vancouver officer Donald Sahota was killed in the line of duty in 2022, more than two dozen responders from six agencies attended a group debriefing that the invitation itself described as “voluntary and confidential.” In State v. Segura, the judge ruled the session was a structured information-sharing process, not therapy — so Washington’s peer support privilege didn’t apply. Attendees were compelled to testify under oath about what their colleagues said in the room.

Read that again: a session advertised as confidential, run by a psychologist, after a line-of-duty death — and the contents were discoverable.

“Confidential” Is Not the Same as “Privileged”

This is the distinction almost nobody explains at the start of a debrief. “Confidential” is a policy promise: your peer team member agrees not to repeat what you said. “Privileged” is a legal shield: a court cannot compel the testimony. A conversation can be completely confidential by policy and still fully discoverable by subpoena.

Whether you have actual privilege depends almost entirely on your state, and the laws are a patchwork:

• Many state statutes protect only communications made to a designated, trained peer support counselor acting in that capacity — not a buddy at the kitchen table, and in some states not a group session at all.
• Washington’s statute, for example, doesn’t apply if the peer supporter was a responding first responder, a witness, or a party to the incident — which on a small department describes almost everyone.
• Utah’s rules of evidence explicitly extend protection to group sessions when the team follows required guidelines. Colorado strengthened its protections in 2024 with a law barring examination of peer support team members and recipients without consent.
• Both the Boston and Washington rulings turned partly on the group format. One-on-one conversations with a designated peer counselor or licensed clinician generally stand on much firmer legal ground than group debriefings.

And nearly every state law carves out the same exceptions: threats of suicide, threats to harm others, admissions of criminal conduct, and child abuse or neglect. Those get disclosed, privilege or not.

What’s Changing Right Now

The good news: lawmakers have noticed. In December 2025, New York signed the Lieutenant Joseph Banish Mental Health Act, which passed both chambers unanimously and establishes confidentiality for law enforcement peer support communications, with defined disclosure standards for the exceptions above. At the signing, the Nassau County PBA president put the stakes plainly: officers are roughly three times more likely to die by suicide than to be killed on the job.

At the federal level, the COPS Counseling Act has protected peer support communications for federal law enforcement since 2021 — but it doesn’t cover state and local agencies. The bipartisan Officer Wellness and Peer Support Act of 2026, introduced in May by Representatives Laura Gillen and John Rutherford and endorsed by groups including the National Association of Police Organizations and the National Police Association, would direct the Justice Department to develop national best practices for reducing stigma, encouraging peer counseling, and protecting the confidentiality of officers who seek help. It’s a study-and-strategy bill, not a privilege statute — but it signals where this is heading. Maine, Nebraska, and other states debated their own peer support privilege bills in 2025 and 2026.

Protect Yourself Before You Open Up

None of this means you should skip peer support. It means you should use it with your eyes open:

1. Ask one question first: “Is this conversation privileged under our state’s peer support statute, or just confidential by policy?” A good peer team knows the answer.
2. Know your state’s law. Find out whether it covers group debriefings or only one-on-one sessions, and whether your peer supporter must be formally designated and trained.
3. Prefer one-on-one for the heavy stuff. Courts have been far more willing to pierce group debriefings than individual counseling relationships.
4. Keep incident facts for your official statement and your attorney. Peer support is for processing what it did to you — not for reconstructing what happened.
5. Use a licensed clinician for anything you’d never want repeated. Therapist-patient privilege is older, stronger, and better tested than most peer support statutes. A culturally competent telehealth therapist you pay for yourself adds another layer of distance from your department.
6. Push your union to back a peer support privilege bill if your state doesn’t have one yet.

The Bottom Line

Peer support saves lives in this profession, and the last thing anyone should take from the Boston and Washington rulings is “don’t talk.” The lesson is narrower: know the difference between a promise and a privilege before you say the thing you can’t unsay. Ask the question, know your statute, and put the deepest conversations where the law actually protects them. For more on first responder mental health, sleep, and performance, visit policefire.health.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical or legal advice. BadgeBiohacking (policefire.health) is a comparison and review site. We may earn affiliate commissions from links on this site. Always consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.