In most U.S. states, people under the age of 18 can marry with certain restrictions. Ohio is one of them, and lawmakers just passed on a chance to ban child marriage in the state.
According to the Ohio Capital Journal, the state lawmakers went home for their summer break without voting on Ohio Senate Bill 341. That legislation would repeal a law that allows 17-year-olds to marry if passed.
It’s a bipartisan bill that doesn’t have any public opponents, the Ohio Capital Journal noted. Last week, the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee passed it unanimously. So, why didn’t it get a vote?
“We had a lot of other bills that we’re going to pass that got out of the committee this week. It’s probably going to be something that’s going to make the floor at some point this session,” Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, a Republican, said when asked why the bill wasn’t brought up for a vote, according to the Ohio Capital Journal.
Supporters of the bill were still disappointed that the legislation didn’t move forward before the summer break.
“It’s just unbelievable that a bipartisan common sense bill that has no opposition from the public, that costs nothing, it has a $0 price tag, it harms no one except creepy men who prey on teenage girls, it is absolutely mind-boggling that a bill like that is not moving,” said Fraidy Reiss, executive director of Unchained At Last, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending child marriage.
Ohio State Sen. Senators Bill DeMora (D), who introduced the bill with Republican Sen. Bill Blessing, mentioned that the state’s House of Representatives could “throw in the success sequence,” but the Senate failed to push through a ban on child marriage. The success sequence is an initiative supported by the right-wing Heritage Foundation calling for people to graduate high school, get a job and get married (in that order) before having children.
In Ohio, lawmakers have already passed a bill supporting teaching the Success Sequence in schools. However, it has faced criticism in the state, the Ohio Capital Journal reported.
“It completely misses the fact that there are so many other explanations for why so many people struggle in life so much… teaching that graduation, then work, then marriage, and then kids equals success also leaves out all of the unique ways that people live in our state,” said Democratic Rep. Beryl Brown Piccolantonio.
Currently, an Ohio 17-year-old can get married to someone up to four years older than them if a juvenile court signs off on the marriage. Citing Unchained At Last, the Ohio Capital Journal said that more than 5,000 Ohio minors have gotten married since 2000.
“It seems to me like it’s a no-brainer,” said Ohio Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, a Democrat, of the proposed legislation to raise the age to 18. “I think it’s a shame that we haven’t brought it forward and just passed it. I know I could think of a couple of creative ways of getting it passed through by just attaching it to some other bill, so we keep hoping that maybe that’ll happen.”
Nationwide, nearly 315,000 minors were legally entered into marriage from 2000 to 2021, and 86% were girls married to men around four years older than them, according to Unchained At Last. While 96% were 16 or 17, some were as young as 10 years old.
“At least 66,415 marriages occurred at an age or with a spousal age difference that should have been considered a sex crime,” said Unchained At Last. “Nearly all of those marriages, about 90% of them, represented a ‘get out of jail free’ card for a would-be child rapist, due to state laws that allow within marriage what would otherwise be considered statutory rape.”
Although Ohio law requires people be at least 17 years old to get married, the state also made headlines after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in 2022, and a six-week abortion ban went into place. A 10-year-old girl who was raped and impregnated had to travel from Ohio to Indiana to have an abortion. Ohio’s six-week ban was struck down in 2024, and it now has a 20-week ban, per the Guttmacher Institute.
Only 17 U.S. states have restricted marriage to adults 18 years or older in all circumstances. Marriages involving minors did drop every year from 2000 to 2020, but they increased more than 3% during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. States where marriages involving minors are most common are: Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Kentucky, Wyoming, West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas.
YouGov polling from last year showed that not even a quarter of Americans believe marriage should be permitted at ages younger than 18. A 47% plurality supported a minimum age of 18 and 29% thought the minimum age should be older than 18.
Ohio lawmakers won’t be back from break until after the November election. According to Ohio Capital News, “any bill that does not pass before the end of the year must be reintroduced in the new General Assembly to be considered.”
