It’s official: Child marriage is no longer legal in our nation’s capital, thanks to our advocacy!
Congress has enacted legislation Councilmember Brooke Pinto introduced, we promoted relentlessly, and Mayor Muriel Bowser signed, to make the marriage age in Washington, D.C., 18, no exceptions.
So we are now 13 states, two territories and one district down in our push to ban an archaic, harmful practice that destroys girls’ lives and creates a nightmarish legal trap for them. That’s a big deal for the 9.5 million girls who live in those 13 states and D.C.
Alongside our allies in the Washington, D.C. Coalition to End Child Marriage that we co-convened with DC Rape Crisis Center, The Person Center and Tahirih Justice Center, as well as legislative champions like Councilmember Pinto, we met one-on-one with every member of the D.C. council. We testified at legislative hearings and submitted memos of support, and we recruited our allies to do the same. We compiled in-depth legal research conducted on a pro bono basis by the law firms White & Case and DLA Piper. We launched email campaigns to target council members.
And it worked!
You made this victory possible, too, if you took action on our email campaigns, shared our posts on social media or supported us financially.
Prior to passing this new legislation to ban child marriage, dangerous legal loopholes allowed a parent or guardian to enter a 16- or 17-year-old into marriage in D.C. with nothing more than a signature, without any input required from the child, and without any real legal recourse for a child who does not want to marry.
Our research found that some 110 minors were entered into marriage in D.C. between 2000 and 2023 — and two thirds of those were girls wed to adult men.
Furthermore, child marriage creates a nightmarish legal trap that destroys nearly every aspect of an American girl’s life. There’s a reason the U.S. State Department has called marriage before 18 a “human rights abuse.”
D.C. has now joined 13 states (Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Rhode Island, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, Michigan, Washington, Virginia and New Hampshire) and two territories (American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands) in embracing the simple, commonsense legislative solution we are pushing in all 50 U.S. states to ban child marriage, without exceptions. Such legislation harms no one, costs nothing and ends a human rights abuse.
Only 37 states and three territories to go. We promise to keep fighting for the more than 27 million girls who live in those states and territories, if you promise to keep partnering with us. Please donate now.
The Washington, D.C. Coalition to End Child Marriage includes:
