Sofia Williams, Sacramento Bee
A bill to ban marriage under the age of 18 awaits a vote on the Assembly floor after passing the Assembly Judiciary Committee Tuesday.
Currently, California, Mississippi and New Mexico are the only U.S. states that have no minimum age requirement for marriage. In California, a minor may get married if they obtain a court order consenting to the union and parental permission. Assembly Bill 1267 would require a minimum age of 18 to obtain a marriage license, with no exceptions.
Similar legislation failed to pass in 2023 after stalling in a committee hearing, and in 2018 after pushback from the ACLU California Action, which remains opposed to this year’s version of the bill.
As part of its opposition to the 2018 legislation, the ACLU said the measure “unnecessarily and unduly intrudes on the fundamental right of marriage without sufficient cause,” according to reporting by the Los Angeles Times.
Bill author Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, D-Santa Cruz, replaced the language in an earlier, unrelated piece of legislation that would have imposed more regulations on drug treatment facilities but wasn’t moving forward. “This year, it seemed like everything came together,” Pellerin said. “We’re hearing from survivors, we’re seeing data and we’re building off of the work of my predecessors. It was just the right opportunity to do it this year.”
Pellerin said her time as Santa Cruz County clerk and commissioner of civil marriage inspired her to champion the issue in the Legislature.
“When I was a county clerk, I had a young couple come in to get a marriage license,” Pellerin said. “She was pregnant and she looked scared to death. The person she was marrying was older. It just gave me a bad feeling. They had their parents’ approval and they had gone to the judge, so we did issue the license … but that moment has always stayed with me.”
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