California’s Catholic bishops are urging state lawmakers to end child marriage in what is one of just three states with no minimum age to wed, as a bill to close the loophole heads toward a vote on the Senate floor.
Assembly Bill 1267, introduced by Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, D-Santa Cruz, would repeal the state law that lets an unmarried person younger than 18 to marry with a parent’s or guardian’s written consent and a judge’s approval. The bill would set an outright minimum marriage age of 18, with no exceptions.
Kathleen Buckley Domingo, executive director of the California Catholic Conference, explained in a June 22 letter to the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee that minor marriages “often involve a young girl with an older man, and may be forced or coerced by parents, used to procure a visa for a foreign relative, as a cover for statutory rape, commercial sexual exploitation, or labor trafficking.”
Christina Sutton, who told the committee in a June hearing that her parents forced her to marry an adult man after he began a sexual relationship with her when she was 16, said the bill “would have protected me.”
Because marriage is a lifelong sacrament of eternal significance, the Catholic Church requires both parties to be 18, old enough for them to have emotional maturity and give informed consent.
Courtney Stodden, who married actor Doug Hutchison at 16 in 2011, has also lobbied lawmakers in Sacramento in support of the measure, framing it as a chance to prevent the kind of abuse she experienced.
An estimated 23,588 child marriages took place in California from 2000 to 2018, according to a study cited by the conference. The California Catholic Conference’s letter noted that the instability of these unions was highlighted in a 2012 study from William & Mary University’s Law School that found that between 70 and 80% end in divorce.
Since passing the California Assembly 66-8 in 2025, the bill has cleared the Senate Judiciary and Appropriations committees without opposition from any member.
However, the American Civil Liberties Union of California Action has told lawmakers the measure “unnecessarily and unduly intrudes on the fundamental rights of marriage without sufficient cause.” Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, which helped defeat similar legislation in past years, has dropped its opposition and taken no position on the current bill.
Pellerin has said that even with a judge’s approval, child marriage can undermine statutory rape laws and has been used by abusers to maintain control over minors.
If the full Senate passes the bill, it returns to the Assembly for a final vote before reaching Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. If California bans child marriage, New Mexico and Mississippi will be the only states without an age requirement for marriage.
From Zeale.co
The Catholic Church does not require that parties to marriage be at least 18 years old. Canon law states: Can. 1083 §1. A man before he has completed his sixteenth year of age and a woman before she has completed her fourteenth year of age cannot enter into a valid marriage.
So the minimum ages are 16 for men and 14 for women, as far as the Catholic Church is concerned.
Yes 👽, but right after you state this, one must ask: what weight does the Catechism’s teaching on permittable marriage age hold? In his 1994 book INTRODUCTION TO THE CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger explained that “the individual doctrines which the Catechism presents receive no other weight than that which they already possess” (p. 27). In other words, the Catechism restated existing Catholic teaching with whatever level of authority it already possessed. It did not take doctrines and elevate them to infallible teaching, for example. The Church’s doctrine on permittable marriage age, as expressed in the Catechism, thus would fall short of the infallibility that is attached to teachings like the Real Presence or, in the moral realm, the intrinsic evil of abortion. Still, the principles articulated by the Catechism represent the teaching of the magisterium and are to be accepted with religious assent, according to the Second Vatican Council’s document Lumen Gentium (No. 25).
The SF Archbishop has announced that the Archdiocese cannot bear the burden alone, of the nearly $400 million clerical sex abuse settlement of 2026. He has asked the parishes to help shoulder this burden. That may be scary, because could some parishes go bankrupt, or could the Archdiocese face parish church property seizures, due to inability to properly meet the obligations to pay the settlement costs of $395 million?
Glad Kathleen Domingo is earning her six figure salary
I’m not sure what your point is. While $179K per year seems high for someone working for the Church, residents of San Jose are forced to pay their head librarian $322K per year. Maybe both are overpaid. Maybe the California bishops should look at that. The cost of living in Sacramento isn’t nearly has high as other areas.
I think the point is that she has a mostly useless, unnecessary job that pays rather well for church work. Parishes in San Francisco are going to go bankrupt because of sexual abuse settlement assessments. Meanwhile, the bishops are wasting money trying to pass legislation and advocate for government policies that have nothing to do with Catholic faith.
Face it, do we really need the bishops to be doing this sort of thing at our expense?
The bishops should be concerned about the absence of under-38 year-olds from Mass, especially the fact that at least 1/3 of students newly confirmed stop going to Mass the very next week if they were even attending Mass before confirmation.
Hey Cal Catholic, how about posting the story about the SF Archdiocese assessing each parish amounts in the millions of dollars per parish to pay abuse settlements? Goodbye SF parishes. You have been financially ruined.
Many Muslims won’t like this.
It would also make the age for marriage the same as the age of consent for sexual activity. Imagine that, sex and marriage lining up.
Will it be enforced (or not enforced) as strictly as the age of consent for sexual activity is?
We all know that no girls under 18 in California engage in sexual activity.
Just ask Planned Parenthood, which helps facilitate that.
This is a good law and can help fight human trafficking. It’s just addressing a small part of this and related problems.
We need conversion to Christ and His ways.
New numbers from the British government reveal that more than 100 children have been referred to a special victims unit focusing on forced marriages. Nearly 30 of those children were under the age of 5. The increase in forced marriages follows reports of Muslim immigrants abducting and marrying underage girls.