VICTORY! Washington State Senate sends bill ending child marriage to Governor Inslee

A North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute pri­or­i­ty bill that would advance human rights in Wash­ing­ton State by end­ing the prac­tice of allow­ing child mar­riages is on its way to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee. Forty-eight out of forty-nine sen­a­tors vot­ed yea this after­noon to pass House Bill 1455, prime spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mon­i­ca Stonier (D‑49th Dis­trict: Clark Coun­ty) and cham­pi­oned by Sen­a­tor Derek Stan­ford (D‑1st Dis­trict: King and Sno­homish Coun­ties) in the Senate.

The vote con­cludes the bil­l’s jour­ney through the leg­isla­tive process. Intro­duced on Jan­u­ary 19th, 2023 by Stonier, HB 1455 passed the House unan­i­mous­ly in 2023 before run­ning into a leg­isla­tive log­jam in the Sen­ate Law & Jus­tice Com­mit­tee. Thank­ful­ly, the House revived the bill and again sent it back to the Sen­ate unan­i­mous­ly on the first day of the cur­rent short ses­sion. This time, it got a speedy hear­ing from Chair Man­ka Dhin­gra (D‑45th Dis­trict: Red­mond, Kirk­land, Sam­mamish, Duvall), a North­west Pro­gres­sive Foun­da­tion boardmember.

The rank­ing Repub­li­can on the Law & Jus­tice Com­mit­tee, Sen­a­tor Mike Pad­den, attempt­ed to weak­en the bill with an amend­ment allow­ing sev­en­teen year-olds to mar­ry under lim­it­ed cir­cum­stances, but this was reject­ed by voice vote. No sen­a­tor spoke against the bill on the floor, but one Repub­li­can did vote nay — Jeff Holy. Pad­den and all oth­er Repub­li­cans joined Democ­rats in vot­ing yea.

Here’s the Sen­ate roll call on HB 1455:

Roll Call
HB 1455
Child mar­riage
3rd Read­ing & Final Passage
2/23/2024

Yeas: 48; Nays: 1

Vot­ing Yea: Sen­a­tors Bil­lig, Boehnke, Braun, Cleve­land, Con­way, Dhin­gra, Dozi­er, For­tu­na­to, Frame, Gildon, Hansen, Hasegawa, Hawkins, Hunt, Kauff­man, Keis­er, King, Kud­er­er, Liias, Lovelett, Lovick, MacEwen, McCune, Mul­let, Muz­za­ll, Nguyen, Nobles, Pad­den, Ped­er­sen, Ran­dall, Rivers, Robin­son, Sal­daña, Salomon, Schoesler, Shew­make, Short, Stan­ford, Tor­res, Trudeau, Valdez, Van De Wege, Wag­oner, War­nick, Well­man, Wil­son, C., Wil­son, J., Wil­son, L.

Vot­ing Nay: Sen­a­tor Holy

With his nay vote, Sen­a­tor Holy gained the dis­tinc­tion of becom­ing the one and only leg­is­la­tor to oppose the enact­ment of this human rights breakthrough.

Holy rep­re­sents the 6th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, which encom­pass­es Med­ical Lake, Air­way Heights, Fairchild Air Force Base, and parts of the City of Spokane. Accord­ing to the biog­ra­phy on his cam­paign web­site, he is Catholic:

Jeff grad­u­at­ed from Catholic grade school, attend­ed Catholic Sem­i­nary as a high school fresh­man, con­tin­ued Catholic High School as a sopho­more, and grad­u­at­ed from Issaquah High School.

While in high school, Jeff start­ed his Repub­li­can involve­ment by door­belling for then first-time WA State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives can­di­date, Kent Pullen. Once out of high school, Jeff dis­cov­ered the val­ue of man­u­al labor, while work­ing in a foundry, at a lum­ber treat­ment plant and by dri­ving a combine.

In 1975, Jeff enlist­ed in the U.S. Army where he spent three years with the 9th Infantry Divi­sion and trained as a Scout. Once his enlist­ment was over, Jeff attend­ed Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty where he grad­u­at­ed with a B.S. in Psy­chol­o­gy. While at WSU, Jeff met his wife Cindy. Plans for a future togeth­er includ­ed apply­ing to Gon­za­ga Law School. Then, as even now, the expense of Law School cre­at­ed an uneasy moment. Locat­ing a job that had shift work and paid well enough to afford Law School was a chal­lenge. Find­ing that the Spokane Police Depart­ment would allow Jeff to work grave­yard shift while com­plet­ing law school, seemed to be a per­fect fit. Jeff and Cindy cel­e­brat­ed their wed­ding on a Sat­ur­day, and the fol­low­ing Mon­day morn­ing Jeff start­ed Law School.

In Wash­ing­ton State, most Catholic church­es oper­ate under the juris­dic­tion of the Arch­dio­cese of Seat­tle, which states explic­it­ly in its poli­cies on mat­ri­mo­ny (adopt­ed in 2007) that parish priests are to dis­cour­age child marriage: 

IX. Age of Marriage

Pas­tors are to urge young cou­ples not to mar­ry before the age of 18 (see CIC, c. 1072). A priest or dea­con may have seri­ous doubts about the young couple’s readi­ness for mar­riage due to their age and matu­ri­ty. In such cas­es, the sacra­ment may be delayed (see CIC, c. 1077 §1).

The poli­cies also state that “local civ­il state stat­ues regard­ing the age of
mar­riage are to be fol­lowed.” As of this spring, that will include the statute that House Bill 1455 is amend­ing, despite Sen­a­tor Holy’s no vote.

On Catholi­cAn­swers, Fr. Hugh Bar­bour, O.Praem., writes:

The age for legit­i­mate mar­riage depends on the cul­ture. Nowa­days it is eigh­teen at the ear­li­est, but there are still states where it is pos­si­ble to mar­ry younger. Cur­rent Church law is more strict than civ­il or com­mon law, although until recent­ly it was not. The key here is pru­dence and con­cern for the suc­cess of the union in the matu­ri­ty of the cou­ple. Even today there are some cul­tures in which ear­ly mar­riage is pos­si­ble because of the rel­a­tive matu­ri­ty and expec­ta­tions of the par­ties, but sure­ly in ours that is not the case.

Empha­sis is mine. Noth­ing in the bill con­flicts with the teach­ing of Sen­a­tor Holy’s faith. To the con­trary, the bill is whol­ly con­sis­tent with the guid­ance the Church has been giv­ing to parish priests for decades.

Sen­a­tor Holy did not speak dur­ing floor debate, but he did talk to Grace Deng from The Wash­ing­ton State Stan­dard about his vote. Here’s what he said:

Holy told the Stan­dard that he had friends in high school who mar­ried at approx­i­mate­ly the same age due to preg­nan­cies and had “suc­cess­ful marriages.”

“Most of what you heard out here was hyper­bole or talk­ing points,” Holy said, refer­ring to law­mak­ers speak­ing about the sto­ries of child mar­riage survivors.

Holy also said he doesn’t want to “force” preg­nant peo­ple to either “have an ille­git­i­mate child or have an abor­tion,” and that as a for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cer who worked in the sex crimes unit, he trusts the jus­tice sys­tem to make deci­sions on whether chil­dren who mar­ry are act­ing of their own free will.

To assert that the case for the bill rests on “hyber­bole” is both false and insult­ing to forced mar­riage sur­vivors. Also, chil­dren born out of wed­lock are not “ille­git­i­mate.” Holy is fright­en­ing­ly out of touch: our polling has found that 80% of like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers sup­port this leg­is­la­tion.

Our team at the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute is grate­ful to the one hun­dred and forty-six oth­er Wash­ing­ton State leg­is­la­tors who vot­ed yea and got HB 1455 out of the Leg­is­la­ture and over to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s desk.

We’re also thank­ful for the sur­vivors who came and brave­ly told their sto­ries to law­mak­ers and all of our allies that lob­bied enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly for this bill.

We have espe­cial­ly enjoyed work­ing with Unchained At Last and Zon­ta to get this done. We were hon­ored to be able to pro­vide cov­er­age of the “chain-in” that Unchained At Last orga­nized last month in Olympia. If you haven’t read the sur­vivors’ sto­ries that we fea­tured in our cov­er­age, we urge you to do so now.

Once Gov­er­nor Inslee signs HB 1455, the clock will start tick­ing on its enact­ment. It will go into effect in June, nine­ty days after ses­sion adjourn­ment, and from that day for­ward, Wash­ing­ton will require that both par­ties wish­ing to mar­ry be at least eigh­teen years of age. The days of child mar­riage in Wash­ing­ton will be over.