Texas allows certain children to get married. Lawmakers may close that loophole.

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LUFKIN — Child marriages in Texas could end this year, as state lawmakers debate a proposal that would close a loophole from a 2017 law that allows certain 16- and 17-year-olds to wed.

House Bill 168 by state Rep. Jon Rosenthal, a Houston Democrat, would also nullify all existing marriage licenses involving minors, including those who move into the state after being married elsewhere.

The Texas House could vote on the matter as early as Saturday. For it to become law, the legislation would also need approval from the Senate.

Marriage among teenagers is rare after lawmakers took steps in 2017 to curb the practice. Still, Rosenthal believes the practice must be abolished entirely.

“My first concern was with a handful of marriages that we have in this state over the last few years where 40- to 50-year-old men are marrying 16 to 17 year old girls,” Rosenthal said. “While it was only a couple or a few cases a year, I just saw that as horribly egregious.”

Opponents to the legislation told a House committee in April that legal avenues for young people to get married were important for teen mothers. At least one legal expert also suggested the provision that nullifies out-of-state marriages violated the U.S. Constitution.

The proposal is backed by the Tahirih Justice Center, a national nonprofit advocacy group that has advocated for the abolition of child marriages nationwide. Since the center’s campaign began 10 years ago, 13 states and Washington D.C. have outright banned child marriage.

The center also backed the successful campaign to drastically limit the types of marriages involving minors allowable in Texas in 2017. The change to Texas law dramatically reduced the number of people under 18 getting married.

The 2017 change required a minor to be emancipated before they were married. The rates of child marriages declined significantly, according to data from the Texas Department of Health and Human Services. There were more than 200 marriages involving minors in Texas in 2016 alone. There were less than a dozen marriages involving minors in 2021, the latest data available.

“We always knew that this law would need to be revisited, because it is an imperfect law, even if it's having a really positive effect,” said Casey Swegman, Tahirih’s director of public policy. “One child married is too many, and the only way to get to that is to set a bright line of 18.”

Victims of child marriages feel the consequences for the rest of their lives, even if they do divorce, according to a report by Child USA, a nonprofit think tank for policies on children’s issues. Girls who marry before 19 are 50% more likely to drop out of school than their unmarried counterparts. By and large, these girls will have more children, fewer lifetime earnings and experience more intimate partner violence.

Brigitte Combs, a survivor of a 1984 child marriage that took place in Hays County, has become an advocate to end the practice. She has been outspoken in Virginia and Washington, D.C., where they passed laws prohibiting such marriages.

She wants to see her home state put an end to the practice that set her life on a much more difficult, and often terrifying, trajectory.

Combs’ mother first attempted to marry her off at 11, she said. Two years later, she met the 35-year-old man who would become her husband. He bought her her first milkshake and took her to her first movie.

She was pregnant and married by 15.

“I was scared,” Combs said. “I was scared because now we’re doing this legal thing. I was standing there and the judge, she even asked me if this was something I wanted to do. What am I going to say? No? No. This is not what I want to do. My parents were standing there.”

Opponents in April argued that minors ought to be permitted to marry, especially if they’re pregnant.

“I do not think that single-parent households are as beneficial to raising children as a two-parent household. Please oppose this bill,” George Brian Vachris, a former high school teacher from Houston ISD, said at a hearing.

Cecilia Wood, a family law attorney from Austin, argued it took away parental rights.

Marriages involving minors were legal in all 50 states until 2017, according to Unchained At Last, a survivor-led nonprofit organization dedicated to ending forced marriage and child marriage in the U.S.

Between 2000 and 2018, more than 40,000 Texas children – mostly girls – were married, the organization reported.

Tahirih and other organizations took up the mantle to end the practice, which has resulted in 13 states outright banning child marriages. Other states, like Texas, installed stricter guidelines for marriages involving minors.

The age floor in Texas was raised to 16, and the law requires the child to be emancipated first. But Texas’ emancipation laws don’t offer much protection for the children they impact and there is no guidance from the state on how to determine the best interest of the child, Swegman said.

“Anyone who's getting married in Texas now represents the most vulnerable, most groomed and most coerced person,” Swegman said. “They had to get through this process of emancipation for the purposes of being married as a child.”

Young women still married men several decades their senior in the last few years. In 2021, the latest data available, one Angelina County girl married a man 20 years her senior. And in 2020, a girl from Kaufman County married a man 31 years her senior.

Rosenthal was prepared to narrow the legally acceptable age gap between those wishing to marry minors to three years or less, and saw widespread support among his colleagues. But his mind changed when he spoke with advocates.

“The statistics are staggering,” Rosenthal said. “The divorce rate is super high. The suicide attempt rate is high. These young ladies that get married, especially in rural areas, even with the sort of consent and support of their families, often feel trapped in the marriage.”

Disclosure: Texas Department of Health and Human Services has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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