Make marriage illegal under age 16, NC senators agree in last-minute change to bill

Danielle Battaglia
·3 min read

A North Carolina senator made a last-minute effort Wednesday to ban child marriages in North Carolina for teenagers under 16 years old and gained the support of his colleagues.

North Carolina is one of two states that allows children as young as 14 to marry if they become pregnant and have parental consent. Senate Bill 35 in its original form would have stopped anyone under 18 from marrying but lawmakers didn’t agree to push that bill forward.

Sen. Vickie Sawyer said both Democrats and Republicans told her after she filed the bill that they couldn’t support it because their parents, siblings or grandparents married young and that’s part of their family story.

Sawyer said she compromised and accepted that her bill would allow teens between 14 and 18 to marry but only if the spouse was less than four years older. She said the compromise would at least cut down on child trafficking.

But a change happened once the bill reached the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon.

Senators approved an amendment from Sen. Danny Britt, a Lumberton Republican, changing the bill to ban teen marriage for 14- and 15-year-olds. The bill would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to marry if their spouse is less than 4 years older.

Human trafficking concerns

A day earlier, Sen. Paul Lowe, a Winston-Salem Democrat, urged his colleagues to take the bill seriously while he listened to the debate during a Rules committee meeting.

“Human trafficking is a real issue. Arranged marriages still happen in America,” Lowe said. “We don’t need to be one of those states that supports that kind of legislation.”

Lowe said his grandparents also married as teens and felt they were too young, but he added that despite his own family history, child marriage shouldn’t be such a hard issue to legislate.

Sawyer told the Senate that she became interested in North Carolina’s child marriage laws after noticing a man eating with his much younger wife and children at a diner.

She looked up child-marriage statistics and learned that the majority of these marriages end in divorce and often involve a history of domestic abuse, mental-health issues and educational deficiencies.

The amended bill passed the Senate unanimously and moves to the House.

For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it on Pandora, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Megaphone or wherever you get your podcasts.

Under the Dome

With the start of the new year and a new legislative session, The News & Observer has launched a new Under the Dome podcast. We’re unpacking legislation and issues that matter to keep you updated on what’s happening in North Carolina politics twice a week on Monday and Friday mornings. Check us out here and sign up for our weekly Under the Dome newsletter for more political news.

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