NASHVILLE - An effort to ban child marriage in Tennessee could get new life Monday, with the Republican-controlled House expected to consider letting a subcommittee weigh reversing its decision to delay action until 2019.
Majority Leader Glen Casada, R-Franklin, who made the motion last week in the Civil Justice Subcommittee to shuttle the bill off for summer study, said he reconsidered after later learning about the number of children who are married to adults in Tennessee.
"I was more than shocked," Casada said Friday, noting that a number of children as young as age 13 were married to far older adults. "I had no idea."
Last Wednesday, Casada moved to postpone consideration of the "child bride" bill until 2019 in the subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Mike Carter, R-Ooltewah. Casada said he was acting at the behest of David Fowler, a former Signal Mountain senator who heads the conservative Family Action Council of Tennessee.
Fowler said he fears tinkering with state marriage laws now will hinder his pending state litigation he theorizes could ultimately force the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider its landmark 2015 ruling allowing same-sex couples to marry.
The House sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Darren Jernigan, D-Nashville, said that's not the issue at all.
"It's about children being married to adults and having no minimum age limit in Tennessee," said Jernigan, noting it's usually young girls getting married off to men who are sometimes decades older, with the girls sometimes ending up in abusive situations, unable to take legal action because they are still minors.
"It puts us with the same countries as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen," he added.
But Jernigan later thanked Casada after the leader said he would move to re-open discussion in the subcommittee.
Under current Tennessee law, county clerks can't issue marriage licenses to teens under age 18 except in two circumstances. In the cases of people ages 16 and 17, a parent can legally assent to the marriage.
But there is another provision that allows a county mayor or judge to waive the age requirement for someone under age 16. Citing Tennessee health statistics, the national advocacy group Unchained at Last says that's resulted in three instances of children getting married at age 10 and others in their early teens.
According to an analysis by the General Assembly's Fiscal Review Committee, the Tennessee Department of Health says that in 2016, there were 42 grooms and 166 brides who were under 18 years of age at the time of marriage.
From 2012 to 2016 there was an average of 36 grooms and 183 brides under 18 years of age each year.
Marriage for people under age 18 is a debate occurring in a number of states around the country, where most, if not all, have exceptions that allow legal unions in which one or both partners are under age 18.
Just on Friday, Florida lawmakers passed and sent to Gov. Rick Scott legislation that bars marriages for children or youths under age 17. Those age 17 can marry with parental consent. But they face certain requirements, including a premarital preparation course, Thompson-Reuters reported.
And 17-year-olds cannot marry someone more than two years older under the Florida legislation. The bill was championed among others by a now 58-year-old Florida woman who said she was married off at age 11 to a much older man.
Carter, the Civil Subcommittee chairman and a former Hamilton County General Sessions Court judge, said he's "happy to hear any motion" to reconsider last week's decision "and whatever the will of the committee is, we'll be happy to do that.
"I have no opposition to hearing the matter," Carter added. "If we've got a problem I want it corrected. But it remains to be seen if we have a problem. I just haven't heard all the facts yet. It's like being in court - you can't make a decision until you've heard all the facts."
He said he met late in the week with advocates, including Fraidy Reiss, director of the New York-based Unchained at Last organization.
He said he pointed out some potential issues and the advocates agreed to work on them.
The Senate companion bill came up last week on the Senate floor, where sponsor Sen. Jeff Yarbro, D-Nashville, wound up delaying a final vote after a number of Republican lawmakers raised concerns.
Yarbro argued that of some 9,000 marriages involving people under 18, or 85 percent, involved female minors marrying adult men.
Some Republicans were concerned about a flat-out ban with no exceptions, with Sen. Mark Pody, R-Mt. Juliet, noting it would have prevented him from marrying his wife 44 years ago, The Tennessean reported.
Reiss, the director of the Unchained at Last group, was involved in the just-passed Florida legislation and, according to news accounts, has been a fierce advocate of banning marriages of children under age 18.
The activist, whose group provides legal aid to women or young girls, was born in an ultra-orthodox Jewish community and says she herself was coerced into marrying when she was 19, according to an article in The Guardian. Reiss called it "extremely ironic" that laws make exceptions when parents consent to a child marriage or when an underage girl is pregnant.
"Because, in many cases, the pregnancy is the result of sexual abuse and the parents are forcing the girl to marry to prevent a scandal," she told the newspaper. "So the law doesn't protect the child at all."
Some efforts have met opposition across the ideological spectrum. In California, groups pushed a ban on marriages for anyone under 18, drawing opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union, among other groups.
But in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law last June a measure that raised the age of consent from 14 to 18, and changed the process to require parental and judicial consent for marriage between 17- and 18-year-olds.
Contact Andy Sher at asher@timesfreepress.com or 615-255-0550. Follow him on Twitter @AndySher1.