A bill banning child marriage passed out of committee, but the Ohio Senate did not vote on it

Ohio lawmakers went home for summer break without passing a bill that would ban child marriage.

The Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously passed Ohio Senate Bill 341 last Wednesday, but the bill was not brought up for a full Senate vote later that day.

“We had a lot of other bills that we’re going to pass that got out of the committee this week. It’s probably going to be something that’s going to make the floor at some point this session,” Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, said when asked why the bill wasn’t brought up for a vote.

Under current law in Ohio, 17-year-olds are able to marry someone up to four years older than them, as long as a juvenile court signs off on it. This bill would require Ohioans to be 18 to get married.

State Senators Bill DeMora, D-Columbus, and Bill Blessing, R-Colerain Twp., introduced the bipartisan bill earlier this year. The bill has had no public opponents, but the bill stalled in committee for a stretch of time.

“The House could throw in the success sequence, which I think is utterly ridiculous, but this chamber can’t pass a bill to ban underage marriage, so I don’t know how we can somehow justify one and not justify the other,” DeMora said, referring to the Ohio House adding to public education requirements what advocates call the “success sequence” of graduating high school, getting a job, getting married, and having a baby, in that order, to a bill that recently passed.

More than 5,000 Ohio children have been married as minors since 2000 and nearly 300,000 minors nationally were married between 2000 and 2018, according to Unchained At Last, an organization dedicated to ending underage marriage.

“It’s just unbelievable that a bipartisan common sense bill that has no opposition from the public, that costs nothing, it has a $0 price tag, it harms no one except creepy men who prey on teenage girls, it is absolutely mind-boggling that a bill like that is not moving,” said Fraidy Reiss, Unchained At Last founder and executive director.

She said there was so much hope when the bill passed out of committee on Wednesday, but that hope quickly turned to “beyond disappointed and offended and shocked” when the bill was not on the Senate agenda.

“Shame on Ohio legislators for going home for the summer to enjoy their summer vacation, while girls in Ohio can legally be trafficked under the guise of marriage and can be entered into a form of modern slavery,” Reiss said.

Ohio Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, said she did not know why the child marriage ban bill was not voted on.

“It seems to me like it’s a no-brainer,” she said. “I think it’s a shame that we haven’t brought it forward and just passed it. I know I could think of a couple of creative ways of getting it passed through by just attaching it to some other bill, so we keep hoping that maybe that’ll happen.”

She said there seems to be some resistance from the Republican caucus since it hasn’t passed.

“I really don’t know,” she said. “Clearly someone has some problems with it yet, which is too bad.”

Seventeen states have a law banning child marriage, according to Unchained At Last.

The Ohio lawmakers are now on break and will come back after the November election. Any bill that does not pass before the end of the year must be reintroduced in the new General Assembly to be considered.