The seal of confession is protected by the first amendment as it’s a core tenant of the Catholic religion, and the U.S. government doesn’t have the authority to change religious doctrine of a religion that predates the country by millennia. If you were to violate the constitutional rights of these priests, you wouldn’t catch any more child abusers, you’d just be jailing people for their faith.

Also, the seal of confession is not “protecting people”. The church isn’t going to defend a child abuser, nor protect them. There is nothing to stop clergy from reporting child abusers to the authorities. It only protects speech shared during the sacrament of confession. If a priest were to find out that somebody is an abuser in any way other than through confession, they would report it the same as anyone else.