Child Labor Amendment

The amendment was proposed on June 2, 1924,[1] following Supreme Court rulings in 1918 and 1922 that federal laws regulating and taxing goods produced by employees under the ages of 14 and 16 were unconstitutional.

[2]With the Keating–Owen Act of 1916, the United States Congress had attempted to regulate interstate commerce involving goods produced by employees under the ages of 14 or 16, depending on the type of work.

Later that year, Congress attempted to levy a tax on businesses with employees under the ages of 14 or 16 (again depending on the type of work), which was struck down by the Supreme Court in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture (1922).

[3] The amendment was offered by Ohio Republican Congressman Israel Moore Foster on April 26, 1924, during the 68th Congress, in the form of House Joint Resolution No.

Supporters of ratification, such as University of San Diego School of Law professor Jessica Heldman and Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik, have argued that the amendment could strengthen existing federal child labor protections, especially with some states loosening their child labor laws in recent years.

The ruling also formed the basis of the unusual and belated ratification of the 27th Amendment which was proposed by Congress in 1789 and ratified more than two centuries later in 1992 by the legislatures of at least three-fourths of the 50 states.

Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 regulating the employment of those under 16 or 18 years of age.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of that law in United States v. Darby Lumber Co. (1941), which overturned Hammer v. Dagenhart – one of the key decisions that had motivated the proponents of the Child Labor Amendment.

In 1933, J. Gresham Machen, who was a major voice at the time for Evangelical Fundamentalism and conservative politics, delivered a paper called Mountains and Why We Love Them, which was read before a group of ministers in Philadelphia on November 27, 1933.

In passing, Machen mentions the CLA and rhetorically asks "Will the so-called 'Child Labor Amendment' and other similar measures be adopted, to the destruction of all the decencies and privacies of the home?