Bill to end child marriage moves to the floor of the Washington State Senate

One of NPI’s pri­or­i­ty bills for the 2024 leg­isla­tive ses­sion is get­ting clos­er to leav­ing the Leg­is­la­ture and head­ing to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s desk for signature.

House Bill 1455, prime spon­sored by State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mon­i­ca Stonier (D‑49th Dis­trict: Clark Coun­ty) would require that both par­ties in a civ­il mar­riage must be at least eigh­teen years of age, putting an end to the abhor­rent prac­tice of child mar­riage, which the U.S. State Depart­ment calls a human rights vio­la­tion. The leg­is­la­tion would make Wash­ing­ton the eleventh state to end child marriage.

HB 1455 was pulled from Rules today and is now on sec­ond read­ing. It just needs to be select­ed for floor action and receive the affir­ma­tive votes of at least , and then its jour­ney through the leg­isla­tive process will be complete.

NPI is work­ing with Unchained At Last, Zon­ta, and the Wash­ing­ton Coali­tion to End Child Mar­riage to pass the bill. I tes­ti­fied in favor of it last month and pre­sent­ed our research show­ing that 80% of like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton vot­ers sup­port the bill. Sev­er­al forced mar­riage sur­vivors also spoke at the hear­ing, deliv­er­ing sober­ing and grip­ping tes­ti­mo­ny to a bipar­ti­san pan­el of legislators.

With­in forty-eight hours of when the cham­ber of ori­gin cut­off had passed, the Sen­ate Law & Jus­tice Com­mit­tee vot­ed to send HB 1455 up to the Rules Com­mit­tee. A major­i­ty offered a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion. Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Mike Pad­den and Lyn­da Wil­son vot­ed to refer it with­out recommendation.

The Law & Jus­tice Com­mit­tee, chaired by North­west Pro­gres­sive Foun­da­tion board­mem­ber Man­ka Dhin­gra (D‑45th Dis­trict: Red­mond, Kirk­land, Sam­mamish, Duvall) reject­ed an amend­ment from Pad­den that would have weak­ened the bill.

Pad­den’s amend­ment would have allowed sev­en­teen year olds to mar­ry under cer­tain con­di­tions. NPI opposed this amend­ment — we believe that sev­en­teen year-olds wish­ing to mar­ry can sim­ply wait until they are eigh­teen. This bill does not pre­vent younger cou­ples from get­ting mar­ried in their faith tra­di­tion, it sim­ply estab­lish­es that both par­ties in a mar­riage must be the age of majority.

“Child mar­riage, or mar­riage before age 18, was legal in all 50 U.S. states as of 2017,” a primer from Unchained At Last explains.

“Thanks to Unchained’s relent­less advo­ca­cy, that is chang­ing. Delaware and New Jer­sey in 2018 became the first two states to end this human rights abuse, fol­lowed by Amer­i­can Samoa in 2018, the U.S. Vir­gin Islands, Penn­syl­va­nia and Min­neso­ta in 2020, Rhode Island and New York in 2021, Mass­a­chu­setts in 2022 and Ver­mont, Con­necti­cut and Michi­gan in 2023.”

“How­ev­er, child mar­riage remains legal in 40 states and is hap­pen­ing in the U.S. at an alarm­ing rate: Unchained’s ground­break­ing research revealed that near­ly 300,000 chil­dren as young as 10 were mar­ried in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018 – most­ly girls wed to adult men.”

Unchained’s founder came to Wash­ing­ton State last month for a demon­stra­tion against child mar­riage, which we cov­ered here on NPI’s Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate.

HB 1455 passed the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives unan­i­mous­ly in 2023 but did not receive even a hear­ing in the Sen­ate due to a log­jam of bills. The House passed it unan­i­mous­ly again on the first day of the cur­rent ses­sion, and it is on a glide path to pas­sage in the Sen­ate this time, with NPI’s sup­port. All the Sen­ate needs to do is pass it as-is, and it can be pre­sent­ed to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee for signature.