Sarah Huckabee Sanders Thinks Child Labor Laws Have Been Working a Little Too Well

The Republican Party is currently obsessed with the idea that it needs to protect children from things like being read to in libraries, men wearing dresses within 1,000 feet of them, historically accurate versions of US historyand the knowledge that gay people exist. Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders is one of these Republicans, and on Wednesday, she signed a sweeping education bill that, among other things, bans talk of “gender identity, sexual orientation, and sexual reproduction” prior to fifth grade and curriculums that include critical race theory. How else is Sanders going to bat for kids? By loosening child labor laws, of course.

On Wednesday, the former White House press secretary signed the Youth Hiring Act of 2023, which says that children under 16 do not need to get permission from the Division of Labor to work or obtain an employment certificate verifying their age, work schedule, and written consent from a parent or guardian. In explaining Sanders’s thinking, her communications director claimed that previous permit requirements put an “arbitrary burden on parents.“ (It’s not actually clear how any of this was “arbitrary.”) Speaking to NBC News, Andrew Collins, an Arkansas state House Democrat, said by removing the parental-consent condition, the bill will “increases the risk that there will be abuses and violations of other child labor laws.” Reid Maki, director of child labor advocacy at the National Consumers League, told the outlet that the new law “increases the likelihood that kids will end up in dangerous jobs,” adding that a current increase in reported instances of child labor law infractions makes it a “very odd time” for Arkansas to erode protections.

In February, the Department of Labor said it had uncovered more than 3,800 instances in the last fiscal year of children working in US companies in violation of the law, with more than 100 kids, as young as 13, employed in hazardous jobs cleaning slaughterhouses overnight for Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (Ten of them were in Arkansas.)

Also this week, Republicans in the Ohio Senate passed a bill weakening child labor protections, which is expected to make it out of the House and be signed by Republican governor Mike DeWine. Similar measures are working their way through Minnesota and Iowa.

Last month a New York Times investigation explored the “brutal jobs” US companies are employing unaccompanied migrant children in in violation of labor laws. The Biden administration has since announced it will introduce an array of new initiatives to investigate child labor violations and crackdown on companies that both illegally employ kids and use child labor in their supply chains.

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