The United States argued that, the statute, as an indirect tax, did not need to meet a standard as long as it was geographically uniform.

"[A] court must be blind not to see that the so-called tax is imposed to stop the employment of children within the age limits prescribed."

[2] Even with the firearms case, the Court admitted the law was unmistakably a legislative purpose to regulate rather than tax.

Despite this reversal of philosophy regarding Congress's ability to regulate through the tax code, the Court's definition of the Child Labor Tax as a penalty due to its characteristics featured prominently in the majority opinion in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, penned by Chief Justice John Roberts in 2012.

Previously, in Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U. S. 251, the Court ruled a law prohibiting the transportation in interstate commerce of goods manufactured with child labor was unconstitutional.

After the court rejected both attempts by Congress to regulate child labor, Congress proposed a constitutional amendment which would give the national government the power to regulate and prohibit child labor, without a deadline for ratification by the states.