Oklahoma Raises Minimum Marriage Age to 18, Eliminating Parental and Court Exceptions
Governor Kevin Stitt signed a bill in May that sets the marriage age at 18 with no exceptions. The law takes effect November 1 and makes Oklahoma the 17th state to end child marriage.
NewsweekOklahoma became the 17th state to ban child marriage after Governor Kevin Stitt signed legislation that sets the minimum marriage age at 18 with no exceptions. The Oklahoma Legislature approved the measure in May. The new law takes effect November 1.
State Senator Warren Hamilton, a Republican who authored the bill, said the measure represented the culmination of significant effort on an issue that has been deeply important to him personally, as well as to many others who have worked tirelessly to see it through.
He added that the provisions directly impact hundreds of children—most of them young girls—whose protections under the law are now strengthened. Hamilton also said the bill strengthens the dignity of marriage by acknowledging that a person should reach the age of majority, legally an adult, before entering into a lifetime covenant.
Before the new law, Oklahoma allowed minors to marry with parental or guardian consent, and children aged 16 or under could marry with court authorization. The change follows similar bans enacted in Maine, Oregon and Missouri in 2025. Before 2018, child marriage was legal in all 50 states.
The states that have banned child marriage are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.
The organization reported that nearly 315,000 children as young as 10 were married in the United States between 2000 and 2021, most of them girls married to adult men. The United Nations defines child marriage as a marriage where at least one party is under 18 and calls it a human rights violation and a form of forced marriage.
Fraidy Reiss, founder and executive director of Unchained at Last, previously told Newsweek that when one state ends child marriage, numbers often increase in neighboring states that still allow it.
She said simple, common-sense legislation that costs nothing and harms no one is needed to end a human rights abuse that destroys girls' lives and creates a nightmarish legal trap for minors. Bills that would raise the minimum age for marriage to 18 are currently pending in Arizona, Ohio and North Carolina, according to Unchained at Last’s legislation tracker.
