Imagine being forced to marry as a child, having your innocence, dreams, goals, aspirations, and your entire childhood taken from you. Between 2000 and 2018, this was the harsh reality for over 300,000 minors married in the United States, and most of these cases involved girls marrying adult men, some decades older. Since 2016, a nationwide movement has emerged, leading to reforms in 34 states that either limit or end child marriage.

Today, Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz signed a bill that ends child marriage in Connecticut by raising the legal age for marriage to 18 without exceptions. This makes Connecticut the 9th state to completely end child marriage and the second state to end child marriage this year, after Vermont.

Connecticut saw over 1,200 children marry between 2000 and 2014, and prior to 2017 had no minimum marriage age. They are now the second state to succeed in an incremental approach to ending child marriage: a 2017 reform setting an age floor of 16 and ensuring universal judicial review cut rates of child marriage in the state by about half, mitigating harm while advocates and legislators continued building support for an end to child marriage this year.

D.C. has not yet joined the 31 states that have passed laws taking aim at child marriage and our laws still allow 16- and 17-year-olds to marry with nothing more than one parent’s signature. It’s time for our city to update our antiquated marriage laws and put the wellbeing of our children first.

Tahirih’s policy work is rooted in our core values and in our promise theory of change. We work to advance policies and laws that enable immigrant survivors of gender-based violence to purse legal immigration status, live in safety, and fore their own paths.

The Tahirih Justice Center is prioritizing the following policy goals to immediately improve protections for immigrant survivors with simultaneously seeking long-term, systemic change.

The Washington Post reporter, Kimberly Kindy, interviewed Tahirih’s public policy experts on child marriage in U.S. You can read the full article here.

After several years of efforts, Wyoming has taken action to protect children by limiting child marriage in the state. House Bill 7 does not ban child marriage but is an important first step toward ending child marriage in the state. Until this year, Wyoming had no minimum age under which minors could not be married and allowed older minors to marry with nothing more than parental permission.  

In Time to Lead: The Federal Government’s Role in Ending Child Marriage in the United States, Tahirih highlights the critical role of the federal government in our fight to end child marriage here at home.