Florida remains one of the few states where first cousin marriage is still legal after a proposed ban failed to pass the state legislature this month.
Despite a push to modernize the state’s marriage laws, House Bill 733 hit a dead end when the March 13 deadline passed without the measure being signed into law. The bill was designed to officially stop men and women from marrying close blood relatives, closing a gap that has existed since Florida’s early days.
The proposal laid out clear rules for who would be barred from tying the knot. The legislation stated that a man “may not marry any woman to whom he is related by lineal consanguinity, nor his sister, nor his aunt, nor his niece,” while a woman “may not marry any man to whom she is related by lineal consanguinity, nor her brother, nor her uncle, nor her nephew.” If it had passed, the law would have also blocked marriages between people who share the same grandparents starting this summer.
State Representative Dean Black, the Republican behind the effort, tucked the ban into a larger bill focused on the state Health Department. Black argued that while Florida was once a sparsely populated “wilderness” where finding a partner was difficult, those days are long gone.
“There was a time when I think first cousin marriages were allowed because population densities were not great, and you know it was hard to find a mate back when Florida was a wilderness,” Black told Action News Jax. He pointed out that today, “There are plenty of people here, and there are plenty of people you can find to be your lifelong partner without looking to your first cousin.”
Even though Black’s amendment was added to the bill back in February without any pushback, the entire legislative package stalled out before the session officially closed.
This failure to act keeps Florida on a list of 16 states, including California, New York, and Massachusetts, that have no specific laws against first cousins marrying. While every state in the U.S. already bans marriages between immediate family members like siblings or parents, the rules for cousins remain a patchwork across the country.
