When Sara Tasneem started high school, she dreamed of joining the Air Force and attending law school. Living with her mom in Colorado, she participated in JROTC, attended basketball games and had a boyfriend her own age.
But while visiting her dad in Mountain View at age 15, she was forced into an arranged marriage with a man nearly twice her age. Because her father believed she had broken the rules of her strict religious sect by having a boyfriend, she was married without her consent.
Her dad introduced her to the man who had been chosen for her at a coffee shop one morning. By that night, they were married in a spiritual ceremony in a Los Angeles hotel room. Six months later, she was legally married in Nevada.
From the day of her forced wedding, Tasneem said, her life became unrecognizable. She was withdrawn from school. She was forced to become pregnant with her first child at 16. She was taken out of the U.S. to her husband’s home country for six months.
“I was basically handed to this stranger,” Tasneem said. “All of my reproductive rights were taken from me that night, all of my bodily autonomy was taken from me. My entire childhood was taken from me.”
Tasneem, who is now 43 and lives in El Sobrante, was trapped in her marriage until she was 23, when she was finally able to initiate divorce proceedings after eight years and two children. She had to leave her children with their father while she figured out her next steps but was eventually able to get them back.
In California law, there is no age limit to marry. A minor must get the permission of at least one parent or guardian and approval from a judge to obtain a marriage license or domestic partnership.
Now, Tasneem and other survivors of child marriage are drawing attention to a bill in Sacramento that could ban all child marriages in California by setting the minimum marriage age to 18 — a bill that stalled in a committee controlled by a South Bay legislator.
Tasneem is not alone in her experience. California is one of only four U.S. states that does not set a minimum age for marriage, allowing individuals of any age to marry with the permission of a parent and a judge.
AB 2924, which would strike existing legal language that allows provisions for marriage under 18, was introduced by Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, D-Orange County, in February.
The bill received opposition from Planned Parenthood Affiliates of Northern California, ACLU California Action and the National Center for Youth Law, which argued that it would drive abusive relationships underground and limit the rights of those under the age of 18 who willingly want to marry.
In April, the bill’s hearing in the judiciary committee was canceled at Petrie-Norris’ request, according to the bill’s legislative history.
However, anti-child-marriage activists blame Assemblymember Ash Kalra, the chair of the judiciary committee, for the bill’s withdrawal, stating that he supported amendments that would gut the bill.
These amendments included banning marriage under the age of 16 but allowing the court petition process for 16- and 17-year-olds and emancipated minors, Petrie-Norris said.
Though she said she believed this would be a “meaningful step” that would have made California’s marriage laws stronger than 37 other states, Petrie-Norris said that she ultimately decided to pause the bill because the survivors she was working with believe there should be no exceptions.
“I have tremendous respect for the lived experience of the survivors and advocates who I was working with on this bill,” Petrie-Norris said. “After considering our options for this legislative session, I decided to pause the bill rather than move forward with a compromise proposal that they do not support.”
Kalra declined an interview request from the Bay Area News Group.
No exceptions
A California law passed in 2018 added stricter restrictions for minors to obtain a marriage license or domestic partnership, including separate interviews of the spouses and parents by a judge and family court services to determine if coercion, child abuse or trafficking are a factor, according to its text. The law also implemented a requirement that counties track and report the number of marriages involving minors.
Petrie-Norris’s bill would remove the ability of minors to marry at all, setting the minimum age to 18 with no exceptions. The bill had 20 co-authors across both parties and houses. Petrie-Norris began work on the issue in 2021, she said.
“This was a wildly popular bill,” said Fraidy Reiss, the co-founder of Unchained at Last, which provides direct legal, social and financial services to survivors and those escaping forced marriages and advocates to end child marriage in all 50 states. The organization worked with Petrie-Norris on the bill for more than a year to build a coalition of support, Reiss added.
The U.S. signed onto a United Nations pledge to end child marriage by 2030, but only thirteen states have made marriage under the age of 18 illegal since 2018. According to a 2021 study by Unchained at Last, 300,000 minors were legally married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018.
California’s child marriages
In 2021, more than 8,000 minors in California between 15 and 17 years old reported becoming married during the previous year, according to Unchained at Last’s analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. In 2022, the number increased to more than 9,000, according to Unchained at Last. About 86% of these marriages involved underage girls marrying adult men, according to Unchained at Last’s 2021 study.
California state data collected since 2019 has reported fewer than 15 children marrying each year, according to Unchained at Last. Currently, only marriage certificates that are returned to counties with a court order are required to be counted.
The discrepancy in data is interpreted differently by Unchained at Last and the organizations opposing the bill.
The data collection mandated by the 2018 law regarding child marriage is unfunded, and many counties are not complying, Reiss said, leading to inaccurate data. Planned Parenthood, the ACLU and National Center for Youth Law said in a letter of opposition that they believe that the numbers indicate that minors are marrying in spiritual or extralegal ceremonies instead of through the legal process.
Since Unchained at Last was founded in 2011, “more and more” girls under the age of 18 have been seeking assistance, Reiss said.
“We realized there’s almost nothing we can do for someone who is not yet 18,” Reiss said. “The only thing we can do for them is change the law.”
Girls who get married as children often have worse economic and health outcomes. Child brides are more likely to experience domestic violence and less likely to stay in school, according to UNICEF. Pregnant teenage girls are more likely to have complications during pregnancy and childbirth. There are also negative mental health impacts due to isolation from family and friends.
“Child marriage destroys almost every aspect of a girl’s life,” Reiss said, calling it a “nightmarish legal trap.”
The stalemate at the statehouse
ACLU California Action, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California and the National Center for Youth Law wrote a joint letter to Petrie-Norris opposing AB 2924, arguing that a ban on marriage under 18 would drive abusive relationships underground, and limit the rights of minors willingly entering marriages, according to the text.
The three organizations each sent the letter in response to interview requests from the Bay Area News Group.
“We support what we believe are the intentions of the bill, to address the harms of coerced and abusive relationships on young people and protect them from abuse,” the letter reads. “However, we also strongly believe in and support self-determination and bodily autonomy for all people, including young people who are pregnant and/or parenting.”
Petrie-Norris pointed out that the International Planned Parenthood Federation supports legislation setting 18 as the minimum age for marriage.
“Forced child marriage is a practice that strips children of their autonomy, sexual and reproductive freedom, forces them into adulthood prematurely and shields rapists from criminal charges — so I find opponents’ arguments a bit ironic and misplaced — particularly when they have supported the same legislation in other states,” Petrie-Norris said.
The letter cites protections put into place by the 2018 law, including that marriages of minors are screened by a judge and Family Court Services counselor. It also points to California law that considers relationships with a “very young teen” or a “significant” age gap to be child abuse, adding that this should “prevent any such marriage from passing the existing legal test.”
Unchained at Last critiqued the safeguards provided by California law, saying in its “Reality Check” document on child marriage in California that “when an individual is forced to marry, their own parent almost always plays a crucial role in facilitating it.”
Reiss said that allowing abusive parents to marry off their children or allowing children in abusive relationships to marry their abusers provides no benefit to the child.
Tasneem added that a child marrying an adult “in and of itself is abusive because one person is holding power over another.”
The organizations also argue that removing the ability to marry under the age of 18 would have consequences for minors who “willingly enter a marriage,” according to the letter, especially young parents.
“Denying these young people the right to marry — without compelling evidence that it will solve an existing problem — further stigmatizes their circumstances and does not allow them to make health decisions for themselves and their families,” the letter reads.
The opposition letter adds that, because the nationwide right to get an abortion was overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson, it is important to invest “in approaches that expand, not remove, access to care and resources for young people.”
Both Tasneem and Reiss, who spoke about how their own reproductive and bodily rights were taken from them when they were forced into marriage, said that this argument is unfounded and that marriage should be treated as a separate issue from reproductive rights.
Reiss added that 96% of minors who enter into marriage are 16 or 17 years old.
“I’d rather you pass nothing than make it 16 or 17, and then wash your hands and say, ‘Wow, we solved that problem,’ ” Reiss said. “Why would you even bother passing a bill that’s going to help approximately 4% of the people it’s supposed to help?”
The path forward
Tasneem testified about her experience with child marriage in Sacramento in support of AB 2924 and met with Kalra about the bill.
She recalled Kalra being “upset” by her experience with child marriage but said that he told her that she needs to come to the table with Planned Parenthood because they should be on the same side.
“To me, it’s Planned Parenthood that’s standing in the way,” Tasneem said. “I just don’t understand — we really should be on the same side in this situation.”
Tasneem is one of several advocates who has met with Planned Parenthood multiple times about this bill, she said.
“They have kind of seemed to dig their heels in a little bit and made this a little bit more of a political issue versus looking at this as an actual issue that affects children,” Tasneem said.
Petrie-Norris said that the bill will not move forward this year due to the legislative calendar and committee deadlines, but she is “confident that the issue is not going away.”
“I like to believe that there is always an opportunity for compromise,” she said.
Tasneem and other survivors plan to continue to push for change at the statehouse — through legislation and protest. On July 18, Unchained at Last hosted a “chain-in” protest outside Kalra’s San Jose office, dressed in wedding gowns with chains around their wrists, calling attention to the bill and its stall.
“I want to protect the people with the smallest voice in this process, and that’s the minor,” Tasneem said. “Nobody looks out for them — not their parents, not the law, not lawyers, not politicians. Nobody..”