Child Labor Amendment - Judicial History

Judicial History

If ever ratified by the required number of United States state legislatures, the Child Labor Amendment would repose in the Congress of the United States jurisdiction concurrent with that of the states to legislate on the subject of child labor. The states would have to yield to federal law where the two conflict—which is normal procedure anyway. After several state legislatures initially balked at the proposal during the 1920s, a number of them re-examined their position during the 1930s and decided to ratify. 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 did not specify a deadline within which the state legislatures must act upon the Child Labor Amendment. The Coleman v. Miller ruling 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.

The common legal opinion of federal child labor regulation reversed in the 1930s. 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. After this shift, the amendment has been described as "moot" and effectively part of the Constitution; the movement for it had concluded.