More states ban child marriage, though it’s still legal in most of the US

After authorities rescued 16 children last month who had been confined to a single room in a home in rural Ohio, attention turned to their mother, who had been 15 and pregnant when she married their father.

The child endangerment case has recharged a national conversation around child marriage, which is defined by the United Nations as any marriage involving someone under age 18.

Earlier this year two Ohio state senators — one Democrat, one Republican — introduced a bill that would require Ohio residents to be at least 18 to get married. Current state law allows 17-year-olds to marry with court approval. The bill passed out of a Senate committee in June but didn’t get a full Senate vote before lawmakers adjourned for the summer.

Until the last decade, marriage under age 18 was legal in all 50 states. In 2018, Delaware and New Jersey became the first states to outright ban it. More states followed: Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, Michigan, Washington, Virginia, New Hampshire, Washington, D.C., Maine, Oregon, Missouri and most recently, Oklahoma, have banned it since 2020.

Vinton County children endangerment case increases interest in bill to ban child marriage in Ohio

In May, Oklahoma passed a Republican-sponsored bill that removed all exceptions for a person under 18 to marry.

“Oklahoma children must be able to grow up free from coercion and exploitation, and it is our duty to guarantee those protections are enacted and enforced,” said Oklahoma state Sen. Warren Hamilton, a Republican who sponsored the bill, in a May statement.

Hamilton  said the law protects minors from forced marriage and helps prevent child trafficking and exploitation, ensuring “that no minor, even those who are close to adulthood, is placed in a marriage that puts their safety or well-being at risk.”

In 33 states, marriage under 18 is still allowed with varying restrictions, such as requiring parental consent or court approval for marriage involving someone aged 15-17. Only three states — California, Mississippi and New Mexico — do not specify a minimum age for marriage.

As of 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, Nevada, Idaho and Utah had the highest rates of child marriage, according to a 2025 study by Unchained At Last, a nonprofit that advocates for the end of child marriage. Nevada’s rate — 6 per 1,000 minors — was nearly twice that of Idaho and Utah. Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island had the lowest rates, at less than 0.2 per 1,000 minors. The U.S average was more than 2 per 1,000 girls and 0.31 per 1,000 boys.

Between 2000 and 2021, nearly 315,000 children under age 18 were legally wed, according to the group. Most of those were girls wed to adult men.

Advocates for ending child marriage point to research that has found lifelong consequences for those involved, including greater vulnerability to sexual and domestic violence, worse health outcomes, higher likelihood of dropping out of high school, greater risk of poverty and higher divorce rates.

A 2022 study from researchers at McGill University found that the proportion of child marriages that met the definition of a sex crime varied across states from 1% to more than 50%.

Oklahoma’s bipartisan bill sailed through the Senate earlier this year but encountered fierce opposition in the House, where it passed by a single vote.

Some Republican lawmakers argued that the measure amounted to government overreach and would increase the number of babies born out of wedlock. One Oklahoma Republican lawmaker who opposed the bill said it would take away parents’ rights to give permission for a teen to marry.

Republican lawmakers in states including Missouri have made similar arguments. One Missouri Republican legislator said he believed banning child marriage would result in more abortions, reported the Missouri Independent.

Oklahoma Democratic state Rep. Michelle McCane told her colleagues earlier this year that she gave birth at 15 and that her life would have been far different if her mother had let her marry the person she “picked in eighth grade.” She pointed out that married minors can’t legally seek a divorce or stay at a domestic violence shelter.

“I don’t know about you all, but please think back to who you picked in eighth, ninth, 10th grade, and I think many of you would be very disappointed to be saddled with that person for the rest of your life,” McCane said.

Children under 18 typically lack the legal rights that give adults agency in a marriage, such as being able to file for divorce or to file court actions in their own name.

While Republicans have been divided recently on the issue, underage marriage bans have drawn criticism from liberal groups in the past. The American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood opposed a 2017 California bill to ban marriage before age 18, arguing it intruded on the fundamental rights of marriage.

This week, a bill in California that would raise the minimum marriage age to 18 with no exceptions is headed to a vote in the state Senate.

One of the advocates pushing for the bill this year in California is Courtney Stodden, a model and singer who, at age 16, married a 51-year-old actor.

“I cannot rewrite my childhood, but I can spend the rest of my life helping rewrite the future for children who deserve more freedom, more protection, and more choices than I had,” Stodden wrote on social media in a July post supporting the California bill.

Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at [email protected].