DONE! Governor Inslee signs legislation ending child marriage in Washington

Prov­ing once again that progress is pos­si­ble even in an era of intense polar­iza­tion, Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee today signed into law a bill sup­port­ed by one hun­dred and forty-six of Wash­ing­ton’s one hun­dred and forty-sev­en state leg­is­la­tors that ends child mar­riage in the Ever­green State, abol­ish­ing a prac­tice that the U.S. Depart­ment of State has right­ful­ly called a human rights violation.

House Bill 1455, prime spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mon­i­ca Stonier (D‑49th Dis­trict: Clark Coun­ty) and cham­pi­oned on the oth­er side of the rotun­da by Sen­a­tor Derek Stan­ford (D‑1st Dis­trict: King and Sno­homish coun­ties) requires that both par­ties in a civ­il mar­riage be at least eigh­teen years old, the cur­rent age of major­i­ty. Under exist­ing law, there is no min­i­mum age to get mar­ried, which means it’s per­fect­ly legal for a young girl to be forced into a mar­riage to a much-old­er man by her par­ents, leav­ing her trapped in an abu­sive relationship.

But in nine­ty days, the law will change, thanks to the suc­cess of House Bill 1455.

I joined Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Stonier, Sen­a­tor Stan­ford, Sen­a­tor Yas­min Trudeau, Sen­a­tor Man­ka Dhin­gra, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Zon­ta, and sur­vivors of forced mar­riage to watch as Gov­er­nor Inslee added his sig­na­ture to HB 1455 in a brief but very mov­ing cer­e­mo­ny short­ly after 11 AM at the gov­er­nor’s office.

HB 1455 will go into effect nine­ty days from today, on June 6th, 2024.

“Child mar­riage has a long his­to­ry of abuse and coer­cion, and it con­tributes to the human traf­fick­ing chal­lenge,” House non­par­ti­san staff wrote in their 2023 report sum­ma­riz­ing the tes­ti­mo­ny sup­port­ing the bill. (No one spoke against it at its ini­tial hear­ing in the House Civ­il Rights & Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee on Jan­u­ary 31st.)

“This straight­for­ward bill pro­tects young peo­ple under the age of 18 years from poten­tial exploita­tion, traf­fick­ing, and oth­er harms fre­quent­ly per­pe­trat­ed by peo­ple much old­er than the minors. Most peo­ple can­not believe that child mar­riage is legal in Wash­ing­ton, but child mar­riages do hap­pen, and they are not rare. Between 2000 and 2018, more than 4,800 minors between the ages of 15 and 17 years were mar­ried in Wash­ing­ton. Eighty per­cent of these were girls who were mar­ried to adult men who were on aver­age four years older.”

The pas­sage of HB 1455 was one of NPI’s top leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties for 2024.

The House vot­ed on the very first day of ses­sion to unan­i­mous­ly send it back over to the Sen­ate, where it had got­ten stuck in a log­jam of bills. This time, how­ev­er, it was pri­or­i­tized for action by the Sen­ate Law & Jus­tice Com­mit­tee, chaired by Sen­a­tor Dhin­gra, a North­west Pro­gres­sive Foun­da­tion boardmember.

At the bil­l’s Sen­ate hear­ing in late Jan­u­ary, I pre­sent­ed NPI’s research find­ing that eight in ten Wash­ing­ton vot­ers sup­port end­ing child mar­riage, with over six in ten strong­ly sup­port­ive. The Sen­ate heed­ed that data and the incred­i­bly pow­er­ful sto­ries shared by sev­er­al sur­vivors of forced mar­riage, vot­ing less than a month lat­er to send the bill to Gov­er­nor Inslee, with the only dis­sent­ing vote com­ing from Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Jeff Holy (6th Dis­trict: Spokane County).

HB 1455 is the lat­est in a series of human rights advances that have been secured dur­ing Gov­er­nor Inslee’s tenure. Thanks to the lead­er­ship of Gov­er­nor Inslee and Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tors, Wash­ing­ton has abol­ished the death penal­ty and pro­tect­ed LGBTQ+ youth from “con­ver­sion ther­a­py.” Now we’ve end­ed child mar­riage, some­thing no oth­er state in the west­ern Unit­ed States has yet done.

Ore­gon, you’re next!

Our thanks to every­one who worked to pass House Bill 1455, espe­cial­ly our friends at Unchained At Last, the nation­al non­prof­it found­ed by a forced mar­riage sur­vivor that has been work­ing state-by-state to get child mar­riage abol­ished. Cheers also to Zon­ta, Indi­vis­i­ble, the King Coun­ty Sex­u­al Assault Resource Cen­ter, the Wash­ing­ton Chap­ter of the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pedi­atrics, the AHA Foun­da­tion, and the Lati­no Civic Alliance, which lob­bied for the bill.

And final­ly, here’s to our sur­vivors who spoke up and brave­ly shared their sto­ries in pub­lic, par­tic­u­lar­ly Sara Tas­neem, Stephanie War­ren, and Kate Yang. Your courage and resilience are inspir­ing, and we are hon­ored to have been able to sup­port you in secur­ing this long over­due breakthrough.