Newsom to sign law banning child marriage

Audio By Carbonatix

(The Center Square) – California is the next state poised to ban child marriage after human rights groups have been calling on state legislatures to ban the practice. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to sign AB 1267 before a legislative deadline at the end of the month. The bipartisan bill amends state law to prohibit individuals from marrying in California who are under age 18 without exception. It closes a loophole that allows children of any age to marry if they have parental consent and judicial approval.

“California is one of just three states in the country with no absolute minimum age for marriage,” Equality Now Human Rights attorney Anastasia Law told The Center Square. Mississippi and New Mexico are the other two. 

“This makes California an outlier both in the United States and globally,” Law said. “The potential for harm is enormous, with thousands of girls entered into marriage in California each year. One particularly dangerous loophole in the state is an explicit workaround for statutory rape; sex with a minor is illegal, unless the couple is first married. This effectively allows adults to evade the law and perpetrate with impunity. Once Governor Newsom signs AB-1267 into law, California will be the 18th state to address child marriage.”

Multiple human rights groups, including Equality Now, Unchained At Last and the Tahirih Justice Center argue the issue is nonpartisan and children, especially girls, should be protected. Unchained at Last also launched the California Coalition to End Child Marriage, in support of AB 1267. 

According to an UnChained At Last report, between 2000 and 2021, nearly 315,000 children were legally entered into marriage nationwide. The vast majority were girls as young as 10 wed to adult men.

Advocates of the AB 1267 argue the loophole is used by child predators and those exploiting U.S. visa laws through “proxy marriages,” which have been found to incentivize and justify statutory rape. 

“Parental consent and a judge's approval are framed as safeguards to prevent coercion, but in practice they do little to prevent forced marriage,” Law said. “Once a child is married, they are effectively trapped because of their legal status as a minor; they may not be able to independently retain a lawyer, file for divorce, or utilize a domestic violence shelter. The only way to effectively prevent forced marriage for minors is a clear minimum age of 18 with no exceptions.”

While state laws govern the legal age for marriage, congressional Democrats filed the Child Marriage Prevention Act to address the issue at the federal level. It was first filed in 2024 and recently refiled by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-IL, with only Democratic cosponsors. Advocacy groups are calling on Republicans to support it.

It sets minimum age requirements for U.S. petitioners and foreign beneficiaries of spouse and fiancée visas to prevent the exploitation of children in marriage-based visa programs under the guise of marriage. It also prohibits child marriage from being performed on property owned or funded by the federal government, including U.S. military bases worldwide, The Center Square reported. 

“While proposed federal measures could address specific aspects of child marriage, including immigration or marriages occurring on federal land, states ultimately retain authority over the minimum age of marriage,” Law said. “Without a clear constitutional mandate such as the Equal Rights Amendment, which would guarantee equality on the basis of sex under the law, Congress cannot pass a federal minimum age of marriage enforceable by all states. Therefore, eliminating the laws that allow child marriage remains largely a state-by-state advocacy effort.” 

According to a U.S. State Department report, child, early and forced marriages (CEFM) are a “human rights abuse that contributes to economic hardship and leads to under-investment in girls’ educational and health care needs. ... Early marriage forces a girl into adulthood and motherhood before she is physically and mentally mature and before she completes her education, limiting her future options” and undermines “fosters conditions that enable or exacerbate violence and insecurity, including domestic violence.”

The District of Columbia and 17 states have enacted a child marriage ban: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. Oklahoma was the latest to do so this year. Its new law goes into effect Nov. 1. 

“For the past decade, state legislators have worked across the aisle to strengthen state marriage-age laws and enact complete bans on child marriage. That progress demonstrates that legislators from across the political spectrum agree that children should not be placed at risk of abuse, trafficking, or exploitation under the guise of marriage,” Casey Carter Swegman, Tahirih Justice Center’s director of public policy, told The Center Square. 

Child marriage remains legal in 33 states (minors are allowed to marry with parental or judicial approval): Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming. 

This total is down from 49 in 2018, when Delaware and New Jersey were the first two states to prohibit child marriage under age 18 with no exceptions, The Center Square reported. In 2019, Nevada attempted to pass a total ban but limited the ban to under age 17 with a requirement for parental or judicial consent for 17-year-olds.