About Time: Wyoming’s Efforts to Limit Child Marriage
Anna Beavers, University of Mississippi School of Law, Class of 2024
The sixty-seventh Wyoming legislative session began on February 10th with one bill before the House that stirred up both activist groups and members of the state Congress.[1] Despite doubts voiced by the media, House Bill 7 passed through the legislature, and on February 23, 2023 Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon signed into law the “Underage marriage-amendments.”[2]
The law sets the minimum age for marriage in the state of Wyoming at eighteen.[3] The new law, however, still allows minors as young as sixteen to marry with approval from a judge.[4] Prior to enactment of House Bill 7, Wyoming represented one of only eight states with no statutory minimum age requirement when all exemptions are taken into account.[5]
Despite the mild media frenzy surrounding the congressional votes on House Bill 7, fears of Republican disapproval appear to have been misplaced.[6] The bill passed the Wyoming House of Representatives after three readings with a 36-25-1 vote and passed the Wyoming Senate after three readings with a 23-7-1 vote.[7]
Indeed, the bill received wide-spread support despite past failed efforts in 2019 and 2020. Republican representative Dan Zwonitzer of Cheyenne introduced a bill in 2019 that would set the minimum age for marriage at eighteen with no exceptions for parental or guardian consent.[8] The bill failed 36-25-1.[9] Democrat representative Charles Pelkey of Laramie introduced a similar bill in 2020 to raise the legal age of marriage to eighteen in “nearly every scenario.”[10] This bill also failed.[11]
Democrat representative Liz Storer of Jackson spoke to the core of the issue, saying, “[c]urrently, in Wyoming you could be married younger than you can legally consent to sex.”[12] Activist groups have turned their attention to this discrepancy presented by laws in Wyoming and a few other states. A 2021 report by Unchained At Last – a non-profit dedicated to ending child marriages – ranked Wyoming as the sixth worst state for child marriage.[13] According to state media, around twenty marriages occur each year in Wyoming in which at least one party is eighteen years or younger.[14] In the 2021 report, Unchained at Last argued that laws sanctioning marriage for individuals under the age of eighteen undermine statutory rape laws, “often covering up what would otherwise be considered a sex crime.”[15]
Opposition to a statutory minimum age requirement in Wyoming is rooted in a preference for limited government. Republican representative Ken Pendergraft from Sheridan cautioned, “[t]he more power we give government to interfere in people’s lives and tell them what they can and can’t do[,] the less liberty we have.”[16] Pelkey, who sponsored House Bill 7 in his second effort to impose a minimum age requirement for marriage, responded to concerns in 2020 noting that, “[t]he only way my bill would infringe on parental rights is if you regarded your children as property that you could negotiate away to somebody.”[17]
Despite the passage of House Bill 7, Storer’s concerns regarding the age of consent and the age of marriage remain cogent. According to Unchained at Last, roughly ninety-six percent of child marriages between 2000 and 2018 involved minors aged sixteen or seventeen.[18] So while the new Wyoming law does limit child marriage, it fails to protect the most at-risk demographic comprising the vast majority of child marriages: minors aged sixteen and seventeen.
Nonetheless, Wyoming took a step forward with the legislature’s passage of House Bill 7 – the state now truly imposes a minimum age requirement for marriage with no exceptions before sixteen years of age. Mississippi, on the other hand, is now one of only eight states that has yet to specify a minimum age for marriage when all exceptions are considered. As a result of this approach, Mississippi had the ninth highest per-capita rate of child marriage as of 2021.[19] The relevant Mississippi statute provides that boys and girls can marry with parental consent at seventeen and fifteen years old, respectively.[20] Children even younger may marry with parental consent and a showing that “sufficient reasons exist and that the parties desire to be married.”[21]
The Mississippi law presents the same inconsistency with the age of consent and age of marriage for which Representative Storer criticized the new Wyoming law. However, the Mississippi statute raises an additional issue: gender discrimination. Girls can marry as young as fifteen without a special showing of reasoning or desire while boys must be at least seventeen years old to marry without such a showing.[22]
Despite past failed efforts and Wyoming’s overwhelmingly conservative legislature, the state successfully amended its marriage laws to reflect twenty-first century societal norms and expectations. If Wyoming can do it, Mississippi can too.
[1] Legislative Service Office, 2023 Legislative Session Schedule, State of Wyoming 67th Legislature, https://wyoleg.gov/docs/SessionSchedule.pdf. See also Nick Reynolds, Wyoming Limiting Child Marriage Sparks Republican Outrage, Newsweek (Feb. 20, 2023), https://www.newsweek.com/wyoming-ending-child-marriage-sparks-republican-outrage-1780501.
[2] Shen Wu Tan, Legislative Watch Wyoming: governor Signs Law Setting Minimum Age to Marry, Legislative Watch Wyoming (Feb. 24, 2023), https://wyomingtruth.org/blog-politics/legislative-watch-wyoming-governor-signs-law-setting-minimum-age-to-marry.
[3] H.B. 0007, 2023 Leg., 67th Sess. (Wy. 2023) (requiring individuals be at least eighteen years old to marry, with few exceptions, and prohibits marriage for anyone under the age of sixteen).
[4] Id.
[5] Nick Reynolds, Wyoming Limiting Child Marriage Sparks Republican Outrage, Newsweek (Feb. 20, 2023), https://www.newsweek.com/wyoming-ending-child-marriage-sparks-republican-outrage-1780501 (citing a 2021 study by Unchained at Last reporting that California, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Washington, and West Virginia had no minimum age requirement for marriage).
[6] See Nick Reynolds, Wyoming Limiting Child Marriage Sparks Republican Outrage, Newsweek (Feb. 20, 2023), https://www.newsweek.com/wyoming-ending-child-marriage-sparks-republican-outrage-1780501.
[7] 2023 Voting Record WY H.B. 7.
[8] H.B. 0060, 2019 Leg., 65th Sess. (Wy. 2019). Lloyd Lee, Wyoming Republicans Are Criticizing a Child Marriage Bill that Seeks to Raise the Legal Age to 18. It’s Sponsored by One of their Own Party Members, Business Insider (Feb. 12, 2023), https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/wyoming-republicans-are-criticizing-a-child-marriage-bill-that-seeks-to-raise-the-legal-age-to-18-its-sponsored-by-one-of-their-own-party-members-/articleshow/97838031.cms.
[9] Id.
[10] Wyoming Lawmaker Trying Again to Raise Minimum Marriage Age, AP (Jan. 27, 2020), https://apnews.com/article/db4ff8d24c4c8b77b78151c0f0cee435.
[11] 2020 Bill Text WY H.B. 67 (House introduction failed 31-28-1).
[12] Hugh Cook, Currently, Wyoming Allows Marriage at Any Age. A Bill Could Change That, Wyoming Public Radio (Jan. 24, 2023, 2:27 pm), https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/politics-government/2023-01-24/currently-wyoming-allows-marriage-at-any-age-a-proposed-bill-could-change-that.
[13] United States’ Child Marriage Problem: Study Findings (April 2021), Unchained at Last (Apr. 2021), https://www.unchainedatlast.org/united-states-child-marriage-problem-study-findings-april-2021/ (noting the top ten states with the highest per-capita rates of child marriage in 2021 were Nevada, Idaho, Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Utah, Alabama, West Virginia, and Mississippi).
[14] Hugh Cook, Currently, Wyoming Allows Marriage at Any Age. A Bill Could Change That, Wyoming Public Radio (Jan. 24, 2023, 2:27 pm), https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/politics-government/2023-01-24/currently-wyoming-allows-marriage-at-any-age-a-proposed-bill-could-change-that.
[15] United States’ Child Marriage Problem: Study Findings (April 2021), Unchained at Last (Apr. 2021), https://www.unchainedatlast.org/united-states-child-marriage-problem-study-findings-april-2021/.
[16] Hugh Cook, Currently, Wyoming Allows Marriage at Any Age. A Bill Could Change That, Wyoming Public Radio (Jan. 24, 2023, 2:27 pm), https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/politics-government/2023-01-24/currently-wyoming-allows-marriage-at-any-age-a-proposed-bill-could-change-that.
[17] Wyoming Lawmaker Trying Again to Raise Minimum Marriage Age, AP (Jan. 27, 2020), https://apnews.com/article/db4ff8d24c4c8b77b78151c0f0cee435.
[18] United States’ Child Marriage Problem: Study Findings (April 2021), Unchained at Last (Apr. 2021), https://www.unchainedatlast.org/united-states-child-marriage-problem-study-findings-april-2021/ (noting some children were as young as ten).
[19] United States’ Child Marriage Problem: Study Findings (April 2021), Unchained at Last (Apr. 2021), https://www.unchainedatlast.org/united-states-child-marriage-problem-study-findings-april-2021/.
[20] Miss. Code Ann. § 93-1-5(1).
[21] Miss. Code Ann. § 93-1-5(1)(d).
[22] Miss. Code Ann. § 93-1-5(1)(d).
MEET THE AUTHOR
Anna Beavers, a 2L at the University of Mississippi School of Law, hails from Gainesville, GA. Anna is the Executive Editor of the Mississippi Law Journal and a member of the Moot Court Board, Government Law Student Association, and UM OUTLaw.
Anna attended the Sally McDonnel Barksdale Honors College at the University of Mississippi where she majored in Criminal Justice with an emphasis in Homeland Security, graduating summa cum laude. She minored in both Arabic and Intelligence & Security Studies. After defending her thesis, Al-Qaid, Boko Haram, and ISIS: Tracking the Shift in Women’s Involvement, Anna moved to Abu Dhabi where she worked as a counterterrorism analyst before returning to Oxford to attend the University of Mississippi School of Law.
This past summer, Anna worked for the Organized Crime Unit in the Criminal Division of the Maryland Office of the Attorney General. This summer, Anna will work as a Summer Associate for Kirkland & Ellis in Salt Lake City, UT.