Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed a bill banning marriage for anyone under 18 in California, making the state the 18th to adopt an absolute prohibition in a decade-long national campaign against child marriage.
Until the signing, California was one of only three states — New Mexico and Mississippi are the others — with no minimum age to wed. A child could marry with a parent’s consent and a judge’s approval.
“This is a long overdue measure to protect young Californians and minors,” Mr. Newsom said in a written statement. “Today, California kids are safer than ever before.” Advocates and survivors of forced marriages cheered the signing, saying they were “deeply grateful” the governor had signed the bill.
Opponents of child marriage argue that minors cannot fully consent to it, and that being forced into one is a form of abuse. Since California’s age of consent is 18, they say, a marriage between an adult and a child works as a loophole that implicitly legalizes statutory rape.
The ban arrives nearly a decade after lawmakers first tried one. A bill introduced almost 10 years ago would have made California the first state to outlaw marriage for anyone younger than 18, but the American Civil Liberties Union, the Children’s Law Center and Planned Parenthood objected, warning that a ban could restrict minors’ reproductive freedom and their ability to make health care decisions. Legislators scaled the measure back.
What emerged as law in 2018 only required a judge and Family Court Services to interview the parties and their guardians to rule out coercion, child abuse and trafficking. The Legislature tried again with similar bills in 2023 and 2024; both died in committee.
This year, for the first time, Planned Parenthood stopped fighting the proposal. The group, a longtime opponent of child marriage bans, took no official stance on the bill. In a statement to CalMatters, a spokeswoman, Shelby McMichael, said the organization was focused on other issues after the Trump administration moved in 2025 to defund clinics across the country.
“For more than nine years, legislators who came before us, colleagues serving today, survivors and advocates, have worked to move California toward ending child marriage,” Assembly Member Gail Pellerin, a Santa Cruz Democrat and an author of the bill, said during the Assembly floor vote in August. “Let us be the legislature that finishes this work. ... Children are children, and marriage is an adult decision.”
The A.C.L.U. still opposed the bill, saying it would strip away “the critical benefits and legal protections that marriage can provide to minors.”
Advocates pointed to research on the costs of early marriage. A report by the International Center for Research on Women found that teenage girls who marry are more likely to live in poverty, more likely to drop out of high school and more likely to develop diabetes or cancer.