Texas lawmakers move to abolish child marriage: 'The practice should be ended completely'
House Bill 168, authored by Rep. Jon Rosenthal, D-Houston, would eliminate a loophole in the current statute that lets 16- to 17-year-olds get married if a judge allows it. The bill passed the House by an 87-48 vote and will now head to the Senate.
The bill would essentially bar county clerks from issuing a marriage license to anyone under 18 years old for any reason, notwithstanding a court order that would allow the person to marry. Further, it would effectively nullify any marriage involving a minor in Texas, including those who are legally married in another state.
"We have a few instances a year where 40- to 50-year-old men are marrying 16- to 17-year-old girls in the state of Texas," Rosenthal said while initially laying out his bill Tuesday. "I hope that something we all agree must be ended."
Generally speaking, child marriage is not legal in Texas. A state law passed in 2017 limited underage marriages to teenagers who are at least 16 years old, emancipated from their parents and have legal permission from a court to wed.
Child marriage rates in the state have dropped drastically since then. In 2016, Texas saw nearly 400 marriages involving at least one minor, according to an American-Statesman analysis of data from the Texas Department of State Health Services. In 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, there were just 10.
All 10 of the 2021 cases involved a minor female — the youngest of whom was 15 — marrying an adult male. In one case, a 37-year-old man married a 17-year-old girl.
"Child marriage is too dangerous to be permitted," Rosenthal said. "The practice should be ended completely in Texas with no exceptions to abuse or exploit. House Bill 168 will accomplish this."
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas proposal could end child marriage in state
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