Washington Coalition to End Child Marriage

Zonta is dedicated to Ending Child Marriage – in WASHINGTON STATE

Child marriage, or marriage before age 18, was legal in all 50 U.S. states as of 2017, based on archaic laws at the state level.   Delaware and New Jersey in 2018 became the first two states to end this human rights abuse, followed by American Samoa in 2018, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Pennsylvania and Minnesota in 2020, Rhode Island and New York in 2021, Massachusetts in 2022 and Vermont and Connecticut in 2023. However, child marriage remains legal in 41 states and is happening in the U.S. at an alarming rate: Unchained’s groundbreaking research revealed that nearly 300,000 children as young as 10 were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018 – mostly girls wed to adult men.