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.
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