Child Labor Amendment
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The Child Labor Amendment was, and remains, a proposed—and technically still-pending—amendment to the United States Constitution offered by Republican Ohio Congressman Israel Moore Foster during the 68th Congress in the form of House Joint Resolution No. 184. The joint resolution was adopted by the United States House of Representatives on April 26, 1924 with a vote of 297 yeas, 69 nays, 2 "present" and 64 not voting (65 Congressional Record 7294-7295). It was then adopted by the Senate on June 2, 1924, with a vote of 61 yeas, 23 nays and 12 not voting (65 Congressional Record 10142).
If ever ratified by the required number of America's state legislatures, the Child Labor Amendment would repose in the Congress of the United States exclusive jurisdiction to legislate on the subject of child labor. The states would be stripped of authority to enact laws on that subject under the amendment's terms. After several state legislatures initially balked at the proposal during the 1920's, a number of them re-examined it during the 1930's and decided to ratify it. Those delayed actions resulted in much controversy and spawned the 1939 decision of the United States Supreme Court in the landmark case of Coleman v. Miller 307 U.S. 433 in which it was determined that the Child Labor Amendment remains pending business before the state legislatures because the 68th Congress never specified a deadline within which the state legislatures must act upon it. The Coleman v. Miller ruling formed the basis of the unusual, belated ratification of the 27th Amendment which was proposed in 1789 and ratified more than two centuries later in 1992 by the legislatures of at least three-fourths of the 50 states.
Text of the proposed Child Labor Amendment:
- Section 1. The Congress shall have power to limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under eighteen years of age.
- Section 2. The power of the several States is unimpaired by this article except that the operation of State laws shall be suspended to the extent necessary to give effect to legislation enacted by the Congress.
The Child Labor Amendment has been ratified by the legislatures of the following 28 states:
Arkansas in 1924; Arizona, California and Wisconsin in 1925; Montana in 1927; Colorado in 1931; Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and West Virginia in 1933; Idaho, Indiana, Utah and Wyoming in 1935; Kentucky in 1936; and Kansas, Nevada and New Mexico in 1937.
In 1929, the Nebraska Senate voted to ratify the Child Labor Amendment (the Nebraska Legislature had not yet become unicameral); in 1934, the Mississippi Senate voted to ratify the measure; and in 1937, the New York Senate voted to ratify it.
Today, with 50 states in the Union, the ratifications of 38 states would be required to incorporate a proposed amendment into the federal Constitution.