What major state laws banning child marriage were passed between 2020 and 2024 and who sponsored them?

1. What changed, state by state: a short chronology

After Delaware and New Jersey led by banning child marriage in 2018, states continued to act in the 2020–2024 window: Pennsylvania and Minnesota passed laws in 2020 to end child marriage or raise the minimum age; Rhode Island and New York passed bans in 2021; Massachusetts followed in 2022; Vermont, Connecticut and Michigan enacted bans in 2023; and Washington, Virginia and New Hampshire passed laws in 2024 ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Observers describe this period as an accelerating trend from dozens of permissive statutes toward more states setting 18 as a hard minimum ^{[1] [3]}.

2. Who sponsored the key federal effort

At the federal level, the Child Marriage Prevention Act of 2024 (S.4990) was introduced in the U.S. Senate by Majority Whip Dick Durbin and is associated with Senators Brian Schatz and Kirsten Gillibrand as lead cosponsors, according to the bill text and senators’ offices ^{[4] [5] [6]}. The legislation focuses on federal immigration rules and other gaps to discourage child marriage nationwide and to pressure states to adopt full bans ^{[4] [5]}.

3. State sponsors: reporting documents the laws but often omits one-line sponsors

Public summaries and advocacy groups list which states passed bans from 2020–2024, but the search results provided do not consistently name each bill sponsor (member of state legislatures) for every state law passed in that window. Coverage catalogues the states and timing — for example, New Hampshire’s SB 359 (signed June 2024) is reported as the statute that raised the age to 18 in that state — but not every source in the file gives the single legislator sponsor’s name for each enactment ^{[2] [7]}. Available sources do cite sponsors in the federal bill (Durbin, Schatz, Gillibrand), while state-level sponsor names are unevenly reported in this set ^{[5] [6] [2]}.

4. Why sponsors and advocates emphasize these laws

Supporters and many sponsoring offices frame these measures as correcting “archaic” or dangerous loopholes that allowed marriage as a shield against statutory-rape prosecutions and that exposed minors — disproportionately girls — to higher risks of intimate partner violence and lifelong harm ^{[4] [6] [8]}. Advocacy groups such as Unchained At Last, Tahirih Justice Center and Equality Now publicly endorsed reforms and documented state-by-state progress, providing political momentum that often guided sponsorship decisions ^{[6] [8] [3]}.

5. Political dynamics and objections reported

The supplied reporting notes that bills face cross-ideological opposition in some states: conservative lawmakers have sometimes opposed bans citing concerns such as protecting parental rights or other policy trade-offs, while in some more liberal jurisdictions debate has emerged around narrow exceptions intended to protect minors in complex situations ^{[3] [7]}. This explains both the incremental nature of some 2020 bills (raising ages or adding judicial oversight) and the more sweeping bans enacted elsewhere ^{[7] [2]}.

6. Limits of the available reporting and what’s not found

The documents in your search set identify which states passed bans or raised minimums from 2020–2024 and they name the federal sponsors of S.4990, but they do not provide a comprehensive, cited list of every state bill’s individual legislative sponsor for each law in that period. Therefore, a fully sourced roster of “who sponsored each state law” is not available in the current reporting; finding each state sponsor will require consulting the individual state bill texts or legislative records (not found in current reporting) ^{[1] [2] [7]}.

7. What to watch next

Advocates expect continued activity at both the state and federal levels: state campaigns aim to convert remaining exceptions into absolute minimums of 18, while federal proposals like S.4990 seek to close immigration-based loopholes that critics say encourage cross-border child marriages ^{[4] [6] [3]}. Because some states have introduced rollbacks or narrow carve-outs soon after bans, legislative shifts remain possible and should be tracked in state legislative records rather than only advocacy summaries ^{[7] [2]}.

If you want, I can compile a state-by-state table of the 2020–2024 laws mentioned in these sources and then fetch the primary state legislative sponsors by linking to each state bill’s official record (that second step requires checking state legislative websites beyond the sources you provided).