Colorado Moves to End Child Marriage…But Some Senators Say “I Don’t”

Brittany was seventeen years old when she was forced to marry her abuser.

The man had groomed and molested Brittany since she was just thirteen, and he was twenty. At sixteen, he coerced Brittany into leaving Colorado with him, threatening to tell her religious father about the years of abuse he had inflicted on her. Police eventually returned Brittany home, but her nightmare hadn’t ended. The man spoke with Brittany’s father, and to her horror, the two agreed that she would marry him.

Brittany was trapped in a “legal no man’s land,” as State Senator Janice Marchman describes it. Married minors cannot file for divorce or protection orders without an adult. They are emancipated from their parents and often no longer covered by child protection services. And marriage shields the adult spouse from statutory rape or sexual assault charges.

Colorado lawmakers are working to stop child marriages like hers from ever happening again.

Senate Bill 26-048, sponsored by Marchman and Senator Nick Hinrichsen, would require that individuals be at least eighteen years old to obtain a marriage license in Colorado.

The bill passed its first vote on Tuesday, February 17, in the Senate State, Veterans & Military Affairs Committee. Brittany, who preferred not to use a last name, shared her story with lawmakers during the committee meeting.

“I’m here to represent the survivors of grooming and abuse who have been silenced by a marriage license,” Brittany said. “The question isn’t whether or not adolescents should have the right to marry; the question is whether or not you want to continue allowing the grooming of Colorado’s children.”

At least 4,763 marriage license applications submitted in Colorado between 2000 and 2025 involved someone under the age of eighteen, according to state data.

Just seven years ago, there was no legal minimum age for marriage in Colorado.

In 2006, state lawmakers passed a bill prohibiting people under eighteen from entering into common-law marriages. The move followed public outrage over a local 34-year-old man who used his common-law marriage with a fourteen-year-old girl to fight his sexual assault charge. But there was still no set minimum age for children to enter into ceremonial marriages; state law only specified that children fifteen and younger needed a judge’s approval to marry, and those aged sixteen and seventeen needed either judicial or parental approval.

It wasn’t until 2019 that lawmakers passed a bill prohibiting children under sixteen from obtaining a marriage license and requiring judicial approval for sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds to marry. Since that change took effect, minors have been involved in at least 139 marriage license applications in Colorado, according to state data. And that number could be much higher: Data for 2024 and 2025 are incomplete due to an ongoing data conversion, which has resulted in the age of applicants being “unknown” in over 3,300 marriage license submissions from those years.

This new bill, SB 48, would repeal the legal exception that allows sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds to marry with a judge’s approval.

Numerous survivors of child marriage shared their experiences with lawmakers on Tuesday, urging them to support SB 48. The harrowing testimonies included a fifteen-year-old Denver girl forced to marry a 28-year-old man; a twelve-year-old Washington girl sold into marriage by her family for $6,000; and a fourteen-year-old Coloradan girl whose marriage was approved by a judge because she was pregnant.

Hinrichsen said the idea for the bill came from one of his constituents who is currently struggling to get a divorce after being pressured to marry as a minor.

“Children should not be getting married,” Hinrichsen said during the committee. “Kids should be protected from those decisions that can have lifelong impacts. …That’s the foundation of this bill.”

“My mother was sixteen when she got married. My father was considerably older. And I’m thankful for their marriage because I’m here,” Republican Senator Lynda Zamora Wilson said. “There are successes. There are reasons; love or a child is born. …If there is a teen pregnancy and the couple wants to marry, this would prevent them from marrying. …I do not want to take that ability for that couple to marry.”

Anti-child marriage advocates argue that such teens can simply wait until they reach adulthood to marry, and that the harms of allowing underage marriage far outweigh the success stories.

“The idea that banning child marriage takes away agency, takes away a right for minors, that’s like saying that banning child rape takes away a child’s right to be raped,” said Fraidy Reiss, founder and executive director of Unchained At Last, a nonprofit advocating for the end of child marriage. “It’s not a right. It’s a human rights abuse.”

The bill also received pushback from abortion rights groups, who feared it would “perpetuate the idea that young people are incapable of making informed decisions about their lives or futures,” said Vanessa Martinez of the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity & Reproductive Rights. She expressed worries that the bill would set a legal precedent that could unintentionally support future efforts to restrict reproductive rights for minors.

Proponents of the bill argued that the issues are unrelated and noted that Colorado has already enshrined the right to abortion in its state constitution.

The Cobalt Abortion Fund is registered in opposition to the bill; COLOR is registered in an amend position. Unchained At Last and the Interfaith Alliance are registered in support.

Sixteen states and Washington, D.C., have banned child marriage so far, according to Unchained At Last. Brittany urged Colorado to join them.

“As a survivor, please, honor the little girl that I once was,” she told lawmakers.

Senate Bill 48 will be sent to the Senate Appropriations Committee for consideration in the coming weeks. If approved, it will face a vote by the full Senate.