The FFRF Action Fund is celebrating a major victory for children’s rights and secular advocacy as Washington, D.C., officially bans child marriage.
Mayor Muriel Bowser recently signed the measure into law, making D.C. the latest jurisdiction to end the harmful practice of child marriage, a step long championed by human rights and secular organizations.
The FFRF Action Fund has been a vocal advocate for ending child marriage across the United States, emphasizing that no child should be subjected to coercion or denied their full rights under the law due to outdated religious or cultural traditions. With this decision, Washington, D.C., joins a growing number of states — including Virginia, where the FFRF Action Fund successfully advocated for a similar ban — in recognizing the urgent need to protect minors from forced or exploitative marriages.
“Child marriage is a human rights violation that has no place in a just and secular society,” says FFRF Action Fund President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “We applaud Washington, D.C., for taking this important step and urge the remaining states to follow suit in protecting vulnerable children from religiously and culturally motivated harm.”
Until this ban, D.C. allowed minors as young as 16 to marry with parental consent, an exception that has been exploited to force girls — often under religious pressures — into marriages before they reach adulthood. Research shows that child marriage is linked to increased rates of domestic abuse, lower educational attainment and economic instability.
Unchained at Last, a survivor-led nonprofit organization dedicated to ending forced and child marriage in the United States, found that some 110 minors were entered into marriage in D.C. between 2000 and 2023 — and two-thirds of those were girls wed to adult men.
FFRF Action Fund will continue its advocacy efforts to push for nationwide legislative reforms and calls on lawmakers in the 37 remaining states and three territories to follow D.C.’s lead in abolishing child marriage.
FFRF Action Fund is a 501(c)(4) organization that develops and advocates for legislation, regulations and government programs to preserve the constitutional principle of separation between state and church. It also advocates for the rights and views of nonbelievers, endorses candidates for political office, and publicizes the views of elected officials concerning religious liberty issues.