Advocates were baffled that the bill didn’t pass, given that it had no public opposition

Senate Bill 341 would have ended a loophole letting 17-year-olds marry legal adults up to four years older than them with court approval and seemed bound for passage. No one testified against it during its five public readings, and it had the support of youth advocates and the Catholic church.

The legislation had a pair of bipartisan sponsors, and it passed the state Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously on Wednesday, the last full day before the summer recess began. Despite the initial momentum in the Senate, the bill never passed there in a full floor vote, and it had yet to be introduced in the House.

Still, campaigners and lawmakers said it was “mind-boggling” that the bill has not progressed. “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,” Fraidy Reiss, founder of the non-profit Unchained At Last, which campaigns against child marriage, told the Ohio Capital Journal.