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There is no evidence in available reporting that conservatives as a unified movement are trying to lower the U.S. age of consent for sex; recent reporting and fact-checks show rumors of federal moves ...
Thirty-four U.S. states still allow marriage under age 18, and four states—California, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Oklahoma—have been reported as having when parental or judicial approval is availabl...
Recent research estimates that roughly 300,000 minors were legally married in the United States between 2000 and 2018, with one peer‑reviewed analysis putting the total “nearly 300,000” for 2000–2018 ...
As of mid‑2025, the legal landscape is mixed: most states allow 16‑year‑olds to marry with some combination of parental and/or judicial permission, but a growing minority of states have banned all und...
California’s baseline legal marrying age is 18, but state law allows persons under 18 to marry if they obtain parental consent and a court order—meaning there is effectively no statutory minimum age w...
Donald Trump has not been documented proposing any federal legislation to change the minimum marriage age; reporting indicates the issue has seen and most recent advocacy and legislative attention has...
Since 2020, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers at state and federal levels have introduced legislation that would change the minimum marriage age — most commonly proposals to raise the floor to ...
California law changed in 2024–2025: minors who are not emancipated generally cannot marry or enter into a domestic partnership, but , so limited exceptions continue to exist. Advocacy groups and inve...
Between 2010 and the mid‑2010s, most U.S. minors who married were 16–17 years old, overwhelmingly female, and disproportionately in certain states and communities; studies using American Community Sur...
As of 2024 the number of U.S. states that had enacted “bright‑line” bans making 18 the minimum marriage age with no exceptions rose to at least 13, with Washington, Virginia and New Hampshire joining ...
Between 2020 and 2024, multiple U.S. states tightened marriage-age laws: notable changes in 2020 included laws in Pennsylvania and Minnesota; states that enacted full bans (no exceptions) or raised mi...
Minors cannot get married with parental consent in all U.S. states in 2025; a growing minority of states have set 18 as an absolute minimum while most states still permit some form of under‑18 marriag...
Several states have moved in recent years to raise their without exceptions, while others have proposed or partially reformed laws that still permit minors to marry under certain conditions. Key confi...