Nebraska lawmaker seeks to push state’s minimum age for marriage to 18

A bill heard Thursday in the Nebraska Legislature’s Judiciary Committee aims to bump up Nebraska’s minimum legal age for marriage from 17 to 18 years old. It would also remove the ability for a parent or legal guardian to consent to a marriage if the child is younger than 18.

Sen. Wendy DeBoer, who represents District 10 in northwest Omaha, is sponsoring the bill that she said has a “really simple” mission.

“As long as you’re a minor, your rights are limited, which means if you’re being forced into marriage, you have limited ways to get out of the situation,” DeBoer told committee members. “Forced marriages are a common tactic of human traffickers and even something like a cult to exert full control over others.”

DeBoer said that this bill doesn’t target arranged marriages. Her legislation seeks to mitigate the possibilities of a young forced marriage.

“Typically, forced marriages occur through violence, threats, grooming, fraud or other similar methods, and children are more likely to be victims of forced marriages as they cannot file for protection orders against those forced them to marry," she said.

The senator referenced a made-up scenario in which a 17-year-old girl’s parents are addicted to drugs and short of money. A person who’s friends with the parents’ drug dealer, and “knows they’ll do anything for meth and money,” offers them $5,000 for the girl’s hand in marriage, and if they don’t accept, he’ll notify authorities of their drug use. The girl is then forced to marry the older man, moves across the country, and now the 17-year-old is being abused and trafficked.

“This is something which is possible under the current law, and it does happen,” DeBoer said to senators.

Sarah Hanify, a social worker and member of the Social Work Advocacy Committee, wrote a letter in support of the legislation change, saying the lack of action on these issues at the state level “only perpetuates marriages with dangerous power imbalances.”

“As a social worker that has worked my entire career to increase protections for children, this bill is necessary and appropriate to ensure that children are being protected from the harm that child marriages bring,” Hanify wrote.

Hanify said this is an issue that primarily affects young girls, and that the impacts of child marriages bring risks of physical, sexual, financial and emotional abuse. Hanify pointed to other experiences that could occur, such as early and unplanned pregnancies, poor mental and physical health outcomes and an increased risk of dropping out of high school.

The bill received two letters in opposition. “Unchained At Last,” a nonprofit that seeks to end child marriages in the U.S., said the legislation doesn’t go far enough. A representative of the organization said that while they support the intention of the proposal, it wouldn’t “solve the problem of underage marriage,” since the limit wouldn’t mirror the state’s age of adulthood, which is 19 years old.

DeBoer justified her selection of the legal limit being 18 by pointing to current laws that allow people to vote and enter the military when they’re 18. But in Nebraska, a person doesn’t reach the “age of majority,” or legal adult age, until they’re 19. The age of sexual consent in Nebraska is still 16.

“Minors who are not yet 19 cannot easily enter a domestic violence shelter, bring a legal action or even seek a protective order,” a spokesperson for Unchained At Last wrote. “LB984 as written would not protect 18-year-olds from the harms and dangers of underage marriage.”

A second letter in opposition from Elle Hansen in Lincoln urged committee members to not pass the bill, arguing if the consent for sexual activity is 16, then prohibiting marriage until 18 is “an infringement on the religious freedom of a grand multiplicity of Nebraskans.”

The committee didn’t take immediate action on the bill.

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