California is currently one of only three states in the country — alongside Mississippi and New Mexico — that sets no minimum age at all for marriage, allowing a child of any age to be legally wed as long as a parent or guardian signs off. A bill designed to close that loophole for good just cleared a major hurdle in Sacramento, passing the state Senate on a unanimous 38-0 vote this past Wednesday.
An analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by the advocacy organization Unchained At Last estimated that roughly 35,000 minors were married in California between 2000 and 2021, with the vast majority of those cases involving underage girls wed to adult men, the same report notes.