By David Shanet Clark
Thursday night the Senate Judiciary Committee in Charleston killed the minimum age for marriage bill, but in a national media storm, the bill was fast tracked back onto the Senate Floor on Friday morning. On the 58th day of the 60 day regular session, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 9-8 to block House Bill 3018 from moving on to a full Senate vote.
The bill had decisively passed the House and Rep. Kayla Young, a Democrat from South Charleston, had martialled arguments that she presented to the press, the House and the Senate Committee. “There’s been 41 marriages that would have violated our statutory rape laws because one of the (married) children were under 16,” Young said.
Seven states currently have no minimum age requirement for marriage. Parents or guardians can approve 16 or 17 year olds’ marrying, but a judge’s waiver is needed for a West Virginia child under 16 to wed. Kansas makes 15 the minimum, but West Virginia is one of seven states with no minimum age. Del. Young stated that since 2000 West Virginia has had 3,600 under-18 marriages. According to the Associated Press 86% of child marriages involve under-18 females, and the Pew Research Center concluded that about 7% of West Virginia marriages involved under-18’s in recent years.
The Senate Judiciary Committee action to block was not the end of the marriage minimum age bill. National news outlets Fox News, Rolling Stone, the Hill, Associated Press, the Raw Story and many regional news sites picked up on the original WV MetroNews reporting filed by reporter Brad McIlhenny. Legislators saw that the rejection of HB3018 was turning into a national embarrassment — and by Friday morning Rep. Young’s minimum age for marriage bill had been brought back to be considered on the floor of the Senate.