California has banned marriage for anyone under 18, eliminating a legal exception that had allowed minors to wed with parental consent or judicial approval. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the legislation into law, making California one of a growing number of U.S. states to set 18 as the absolute minimum age for marriage.
The new law closes a loophole that had been on the books for decades. Previously, California permitted minors to marry if they had parental consent and a judge's approval, a provision that advocacy groups said was used to pressure pregnant teenagers and young girls into marriages they could not legally exit. California now joins roughly a dozen other states that have passed similar bans in recent years, including Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
The change reflects a broader reassessment of child marriage in the United States, where an estimated 300,000 minors were married between 2000 and 2018, according to data compiled by the advocacy group Unchained At Last. Most were girls married to adult men, and many were between 16 and 17 years old.
Globally, the practice remains far more widespread. UNICEF estimates that approximately 650 million women and girls alive today were married before their 18th birthday. Roughly 40 countries still allow marriage under 18 under certain conditions, and in some nations the legal age for girls is lower than for boys.
South Asia has the highest concentration of child brides, with India alone accounting for an estimated 223 million women who were married as children, according to UNICEF. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates of child marriage by population, with roughly one in three girls married before age 18 in several countries across the region.
International efforts to end the practice have produced uneven results. The United Nations has set a target of eliminating child marriage by 2030 as part of its Sustainable Development Goals, but progress has been slow in conflict zones and rural areas where poverty, lack of education, and weak enforcement of existing laws drive the practice.
In the United States, opposition to the bans has come from an unusual coalition of religious conservatives who argue that marriage is a matter for families, and some civil liberties groups that have raised concerns about the rights of pregnant teenagers. Those arguments have lost ground as more states have moved to set 18 as the minimum age.
The California law takes effect Jan. 1, 2025, and applies to all marriages and domestic partnerships in the state, regardless of where the couple resides.
