A decade-long fight to outlaw child marriage in California is nearly at an end.
A bipartisan bill that makes it illegal to issue marriage licenses to anyone under 18 cleared the state Assembly on Wednesday, drawing cheers from supporters who said the measure was a long-overdue fix to an “archaic” piece of California law.
“The issue has evolved now because we have better stories, we have better data. We have a growing national movement … marriage is really something that can be reserved for consenting adults,” said Assemblymember Gail Pellerin (D-Santa Cruz).
The bill — whose chief authors include Assemblymembers Diane Dixon (R-Newport Beach) and Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-Irvine) and state Sen. Caroline Menjivar (D-Panorama City) — glided through the state Senate and Assembly without major opposition. It now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.
Until the bill is signed into law, California remains one of three states in the U.S. without a minimum age to get married or enter into a domestic partnership. While the state has guardrails on the marriage process for minors, requiring them to gain judicial approval and the consent of at least one parent before receiving a license, advocates say children can still be easily pressured to wed by their parents or religious groups.
“All we’re doing with any judicial review process … is putting the onus on a terrified child,” said Fraidy Reiss, founder and executive director of Unchained At Last, an advocacy group working on legislation to end child marriage across the U.S.
There were 88 marriage licenses issued in California where at least one party was a minor between 2019 and 2025, according to data collected by the state Department of Public Health. Some of those marriages involved weddings between girls as young as 15 and men in their 30s, according to a Senate analysis of the bill. In L.A. County, 51 licenses were issued to minors between 2014 and 2025, according to the county registrar’s office.
“Even if the numbers are relatively small, every child deserves protection,” Pellerin said. “And we don’t want to wait for a problem to become so widespread before we start protecting children.”
A 2020 study by the International Center for Research on Women shows underage marriages can have devastating long-term effects on young girls.
“Marrying early has universally detrimental effects over a range of outcomes, including educational attainment; earnings; physical, reproductive, and mental health; experiences of violence; and likelihood of divorce, particularly for girls,” the study found.
Although consensual sex between a person over 18 and someone under that age is still considered statutory rape under California law, sex between those same two people becomes legal if they are married. Reiss said the state’s law allowing underage unions was essentially a shield for sexual abusers.
“It destroys almost any aspect of a girl’s life and it doesn’t deliver any benefit,” she said. “The only benefit it brings is to creepy guys who want to prey on teenage girls.”
The American Civil Liberties Union filed an opposition letter against the measure in June, warning the bill could have an unintended consequence of removing a minor’s autonomy over their own body.
“Just as minors have the right to decide to have an abortion or to carry a pregnancy to term (or to seek a restraining order) on their own, they should maintain the right to marry, with robust protections in place to prevent coercion and abuse,” the ACLU wrote.
But Pellerin, who previously served as Santa Cruz County Clerk, said it was the memory of a pregnant teen that helped push her to fight for the bill. She recalled issuing a marriage license to a 16-year-old girl and man in his late teens or early 20s, and felt that the girl’s parents had forced them to wed.
Under California law at the time, Pellerin said, she had no evidence of coercion or force so she had no choice but to process the license. She hopes that once Newsom signs the bill, no young girl will have to go through that again.
“I’m often haunted by that look on her face,” Pellerin said. “My kid is out at soccer practice and this girl is in here, pregnant, scared to death, signing up for a lifetime commitment.”
If signed into law by Newsom, the new minimum marriage age would take effect Jan. 1, 2027.