Skip to content

Monday, Apr. 19, 2021

Is consensual incest illegal in most states?

Lisa Freedland, Gigafact
yes

Consensual incest is prohibited in all states except for Rhode Island and New Jersey. While incest between consenting and closely related adults is legal in these states, marriage between close relatives is not. Marriage between more distant relatives like second and third cousins is mostly legal across the U.S.

Punishments for committing incest vary by length of criminal sentence and fines. Laws also differ—some states prohibit parent-child incest, but not sibling-incest. Others, like North Dakota, go somewhat farther and ban incest between first cousins as well.

In 2005, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal claiming that incest laws are unconstitutional, after biological siblings Allen and Patricia Muth were sent to prison for having children together.

Some foreign countries have legalized consensual incest: France in 1811, Portugal in 1983 and Serbia in 2006.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.