It’s a bad day for child rapists and a HUGELY victorious day for California girls.

Our epic nine-year battle to ban child marriage in the Golden State ended in a resounding triumph today when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 1267 into law. When the bill goes into effect in January, California – home to 4.2 million girls – will finally become the 18th state where we have helped to make the marriage age 18, no exceptions.

Currently, children AS YOUNG AS ZERO may be entered into marriage in California – making the state’s marriage-age laws among the most egregious on the planet. Census data show more than 9,000 children are wed each year in California – and almost all child marriage in the U.S. involves a girl wed to an adult man.

The state’s marriage age laws create a legal workaround for statutory rape laws – providing get-out-of-jail-free cards for child rapists – and a workaround for human trafficking laws. The current laws ignore that marriage before age 18 is recognized nationally as a human rights abuse that destroys nearly every aspect of girls’ lives, and they ignore that marriage before age 18 is recognized globally as a form of modern slavery.

No longer.

After a nearly decade-long battle, AB 1267 – championed by Asm. Gail Pellerin and cosponsored by us at Unchained At Last and the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls – passed UNANIMOUSLY in the state senate and then the state assembly in August, before the governor signed it today.

Calling this an “epic” battle is not hyperbole. Over the last nine years, we have met repeatedly with every member of the legislature. We have staged multiple chain-in protests, dressed in bridal gowns and chains. We have written numerous op-ed articles and given dozens of media interviews. We have launched email campaigns. We have coordinated written and oral testimony at legislative hearings.

We convened and led the California Coalition to End Child Marriage, whose members included national groups such as Equality Now and AHA Foundation and dozens of local groups, survivors of forced and child marriage and advocates.

We partnered with Chelsea Clinton, a longtime, fierce ally in our national push to ban child marriage. We joined forces, too, with the brilliant lobbyist Rosanna Carvacho Elliott of CA Lobby; the law firms White & Case and DLA Piper, which provided crucial pro bono legal research; J Strategies, which gave us pro bono public-relations support; and Eric Esraillian, who brought the might of UCLA’s Promise Institute for Human Rights.

We teamed up with the Clinton Global Initiative; multiple generous donors who showed extraordinary generosity; and hundreds of people across the U.S. who stood up for girls by attending our events and protests, taking action on our campaigns, sharing our social media posts, and cheering us on.

Our battle in California is over, but our war against child marriage in the U.S. continues. To date we have helped to ban child marriage in 18 U.S. states – home to more than 15.3 million girls – which leaves 32 states to go. Together, we can get those remaining 32 states to ban a human rights abuse that destroys girls’ lives.

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California Coalition to End Child Marriage

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Survivors of Forced and Child Marriage

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