California could soon join a growing list of states that no longer allow anyone under 18 to marry, ending a practice that has quietly persisted for decades despite opposition from two of the state’s most influential progressive advocacy groups.
For years, efforts to ban child marriage in California have stalled in Sacramento — not because of resistance from conservative lawmakers, but because of pushback from the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, organizations closely aligned with the Democratic supermajority that controls the Legislature. Now, after nearly a decade of failed attempts, a bill banning marriage before age 18 sits on Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk, awaiting his signature or veto by September 30.
Under current California law, a minor can marry with the consent of a parent and a judge, regardless of age. Only two other states, New Mexico and Mississippi, similarly have no minimum marriage age. According to the advocacy group Unchained at Last, roughly 9,000 children are married in California each year, the overwhelming majority of them girls wedding adult men. Because the state’s age of consent for sexual activity is 18, critics argue these marriages effectively legalize relationships that would otherwise be considered statutory rape.
The path to this year’s bill, Assembly Bill 1267, began quietly in March, when a group of Democratic lawmakers started laying the groundwork to finally push a ban through — this time working to keep Planned Parenthood from blocking it before it even reached a hearing.
Assemblymember Gail Pellerin of Santa Cruz introduced the measure using a legislative maneuver known as a “gut-and-amend,” swapping the language of an unrelated bill after the normal bill-introduction deadline had passed. Advocates say the timing was intentional — an effort to sidestep the kind of early opposition that has doomed similar bills in the past.
This time, the strategy worked. While the ACLU again formally opposed the bill, no lobbyists showed up to argue against it during summer committee hearings, and Planned Parenthood declined to take a position, staying neutral. The bill passed with near-unanimous support in August.
“We need to make it clear that girls, despite their perceived maturity, are children,” Pellerin said. “Children don’t have unprotected freedom.”
The ACLU has argued for years that restricting marriage among minors would strip young people of an important form of legal independence, including access to emancipation and reproductive health decisions made without parental involvement. In a letter opposing the bill in June, the organization wrote that banning marriage for all minors “is a departure from California’s longstanding commitment to honoring minors’ ability to make important personal decisions for themselves, particularly in the realm of reproductive autonomy.”
An ACLU spokesperson declined to answer further questions or make anyone available for an interview.
Planned Parenthood, for its part, said it evaluates legislation on a case-by-case basis each session. A spokesperson said that given ongoing threats to defund Planned Parenthood health centers under the Trump administration, the organization chose to focus its political capital elsewhere this year rather than fight the marriage bill.
Planned Parenthood’s influence in California politics is substantial. The organization has donated more than $2.7 million to state lawmakers since 2002, according to CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database, and nearly every Democrat in the Legislature earned a 100% rating on the group’s 2025 legislative scorecard.
That influence proved decisive two years ago, when Irvine Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris introduced a similar ban. Assemblymember Ash Kalra, who chairs the Assembly Judiciary Committee, told advocates at the time that Planned Parenthood’s opposition needed to be resolved before the bill could even get a hearing. Kalra said he was concerned that banning marriage for minors could complicate their access to abortion services, and he ultimately never scheduled the bill for a vote.
“Planned Parenthood’s voice matters in that, and in other issues that come before us in the Capitol,” Kalra said in a recent interview, acknowledging the group’s opposition played a role in his decision.
The pattern dates back further. In 2017, then-state Senator Jerry Hill introduced a bill to ban child marriage outright after learning that a 13-year-old girl in his district had become engaged to a 38-year-old man. Hill said he was stunned when the proposal drew opposition rather than broad support.
“I thought, ‘Who could oppose that? Who could say that it was wrong?'” Hill recalled. Instead, the bill became entangled in a larger debate over cultural norms, youth autonomy and reproductive rights. Then-Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, who chaired the Appropriations Committee, refused to advance an outright ban, insisting instead on amendments that preserved marriage rights for 16- and 17-year-olds. That compromise became the law still in effect today.
Gonzalez, now removed from the Legislature, disputes that Planned Parenthood factored into her decision. She said her reluctance stemmed from cases she saw in her own district, where pregnant teenage girls sometimes chose to marry partners close to their own age rather than face other pressures. To her, an outright ban felt like it unfairly targeted families making difficult personal choices.
For survivors like Sara Tasneem, the state’s decades-long inaction had lasting consequences. Tasneem said she was forced into marriage at 15 to a 28-year-old man as part of an arrangement orchestrated by her father, who she said belonged to a Northern California religious group. She said she endured years of abuse and could not seek legal help to leave the marriage until she turned 18, since minors cannot retain an attorney on their own. She eventually left the marriage in 2003, at age 23, taking her two children with her.
Tasneem has since become an advocate for ending child marriage nationwide, work she says stems directly from feeling powerless as a teenager with no legal recourse.
National scrutiny of California’s law intensified last November, when a New York Times opinion piece singled out the ACLU and Planned Parenthood for their roles in blocking similar legislation, noting that even Republican-led states like Arkansas and Louisiana had already tightened their marriage laws.
Fraidy Reiss, executive director of Unchained at Last and herself a survivor of forced marriage at 19 in a New York Orthodox Jewish community, said she is hopeful Newsom will sign the bill despite the long delay in getting it this far.
“Should it have happened a decade earlier? Yes, it should have,” Reiss said. “But at least we’re here now.”
Original source: CalMatters
