Which U.S. states raised or lowered their age of consent between 2020 and 2025?
Executive summary
Between 2020 and 2025, reporting and the provided legal compendia show virtually no nationwide wave of changes to statutory sexual “age of consent” laws; the clearest, source-cited change in that window is Oklahoma’s 2025 legislative move to raise its general age of consent from 16 to 18 (Wikipedia‘s age-of-consent reform entry) [1]. Much of the legislative energy in 2020–2025 documented in these sources instead targeted minimum marriage ages and narrow exceptions, a legally distinct locus from statutory sexual-consent rules [2].
1. The single clear legislative change: Oklahoma raised age of consent
The most concrete, source-documented change to a state’s age of sexual consent in the 2020–2025 window is Oklahoma’s 2025 HB 1003, which, according to the cited age-of-consent reform compendium, raised the age of consent from 16 to 18 [1]. That change is reported in the context of the Wikipedia page tracking age-of-consent reform and is presented as a discrete legislative act enacted in 2025 [1].
2. No reliable evidence in the provided sources of states lowering the age of consent in 2020–2025
The referenced state-by-state summaries and encyclopedic entries show no documented examples of U.S. states lowering their statutory age of sexual consent during 2020–2025; the long-term pattern noted in the sources is stability since the late 20th century, with ages generally clustered at 16–18 [3] [4]. Where reductions are noted historically (for example, Colorado adjusting long ago), those are outside the 2020–2025 window and are described as earlier legal history rather than recent reforms [1].
3. Common confounding issue: marriage-age reform surged while consent laws stayed stable
Multiple authoritative trackers in the dataset emphasize that a flurry of 2020–2025 state activity targeted child-marriage statutes—raising minimum marriage ages, eliminating loopholes, or tightening judicial exceptions—rather than altering the statutory age of sexual consent itself [2] [5]. For example, Maine’s iterative changes to minimum marriage age in 2020 and 2023, and its eventual ban on marriage under 18 in 2025, are repeatedly documented in the child-marriage summaries but do not equate to changes in the statutory sexual-consent thresholds that govern criminal liability for sex with minors [2]. Reporters and advocates often discuss both topics together, which contributes to confusion between marriage age and age of consent [2] [5].
4. Earlier and adjacent changes often mis-cited as recent: Wyoming, New Mexico, others
Several widely circulated state charts note that Wyoming and New Mexico raised their age-of-consent figures from 16 to 17, but those changes occurred in 2018–2019 and therefore fall outside the 2020–2025 window [6] [7]. The broader legal summaries repeatedly show age-of-consent norms have been relatively static in the 21st century, with most differences arising from close-in-age exemptions or the interplay of state and federal statutes rather than wholesale upward or downward shifts during 2020–2025 [3] [8].
5. Limits of the sources and where reporting gaps remain
The available sources are a mixture of encyclopedic summaries and secondary legal guides; they document some recent bills and map-level changes but are not an exhaustive legislative database for every state session. Where a claim about a change is not present in these sources, this report does not assert it occurred; instead it flags that the prominent, source-verifiable shift in 2020–2025 is Oklahoma’s 2025 raise, while many other reported law changes from the same period concern marriage age rather than sexual-consent statutes [1] [2]. Additionally, some web trackers lag or aggregate older reforms; careful review of individual state statutes or legislative records would be required to rule out less-publicized changes not captured here [9] [10].
6. Bottom line
Based on the provided reporting, only Oklahoma is documented as having raised its statutory age of sexual consent in the 2020–2025 period [1]; no states are documented as lowering their age of consent in that window in these sources, and numerous high-profile legislative changes in the same years actually concern minimum marriage ages rather than statutory sexual-consent thresholds [2] [5]. For a definitive, up-to-the-minute accounting, consulting state legislative codes or an up-to-date legal database for each state is recommended because encyclopedic and summary sources can lag or conflate related but legally distinct reforms [3] [4].