Lawmakers and trade group leaders, and managers who kept teenagers on the clock late, all colossally misjudged how this would play out, from proposal through implementation.

Iowa businesses have been openly disregarding federal rules about when and how much children can work, and the federal government has taken notice. Who are the victims?

1. The exploited children.
2. The owners and managers who scheduled the exploited children.

If you picked 2, congratulations! You’ve mastered the increasingly popular art of transforming guilt into grievance.

There is more to the story than this quiz reveals: Policymakers and a trade group gave the businesses a big push to start thumbing their nose at regulations on teenagers’ work hours. But even the more nuanced version can be accurately reduced to any of several memes. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions” comes to mind.

The violations can’t be undone, so the path forward involves making the best of the situation. State government, which helped set the confrontation in motion, needs to take the lead on negotiating with the U.S. Department of Labor to reach broad settlements on the penalties for the child labor. With business owners saying fines could put them out of business, it could be appropriate for the state to take responsibility to keep that from happening. Everyone involved needs to follow federal rules. And Iowa’s law will need an update in 2025 so that businesses can’t receive inconsistent directions.

More: Businesses are caught in the middle of conflicting child labor laws. How do they vary?

How Iowa’s child labor law became a catastrophe

The idea of loosening Iowa’s child labor laws came up at work group meetings in 2022 that involved Iowa Restaurant Association President and CEO Jessica Dunker, other industry lobbyists, and Iowa Workforce Development Director Beth Townsend, according to public documents obtained and posted by progressive activist David Goodner.

A few months later, bills with wide-reaching provisions removing protections were introduced in the Iowa Legislature. A few extra-terrible ideas, such as making employers immune from liability when kids get hurt, were tossed overboard in the succeeding months. But the bill Gov. Kim Reynolds signed in May 2023 still fixed things that weren’t broken, creating new problems.

Both before and after the bill passed, Statehouse Democrats and the Biden administration’s Labor Department said loudly that Iowa was risking trouble by saying teenagers could work later and more often than federal rules allow. In such conflicts, the stricter version controls. Iowa said 14- and 15-year-olds could work until 9 p.m. during the school year and until 11 p.m. in the summer; the real standards are 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Enforcement should not have been a surprise. Iowa needs to clean up its mess.

As the Register’s Kevin Baskins reported, Dunker’s Iowa Restaurant Association encouraged members to take advantage of the state law. The Labor Department said it would “continue to monitor Iowa’s implementation of the law to assess potential obstruction of federal child labor protections.” The Labor Department was not kidding.

The Restaurant Association in a June 7 email said regulators were “out in full force across the state. They are taking massive punitive action against Iowa restaurants who are following the new state youth employment hours instead of the federal regulation on hours.” A Subway franchise owner who had not been fined yet told Baskins, “I followed the state law to the letter because that’s what I thought I was supposed to do.”

Dunker, Statehouse Republicans and others have expressed outrage, saying that the Labor Department should have either let Iowa scofflaws slide or taken a softer approach of warnings to businesses instead of fines. None of the objections is availing in the slightest.

Federal officials denied allegations that enforcement has been selective or inconsistent. But even if it was, rule breaking is still rule breaking; this argument didn’t fly when Connecticut’s Aaliyah Edwards illegally blocked Iowa’s Gabbie Marshall in the Final Four in April, and it doesn’t fly now. Also, are any of the people who are aghast that President Joe Biden is enforcing labor laws the same people who have been red in the face for months over Biden allegedly not enforcing immigration laws?

The state needs to clean up the mess it set in motion. Cases involving far more egregious violations of child labor laws frequently conclude in settlements with less onerous penalties than those looming now. Iowa workforce officials and the attorney general’s office should take the lead in helping negotiate with the Labor Department to ensure that Iowans who followed terrible advice aren’t further hung out to dry. If the fines really do threaten to put anybody out of business, especially those without any history of labor-law problems, a bailout would be in order.

Sadly, it appears Iowa will dig in its heels instead. Reynolds on Friday announced a news conference for Monday in North Liberty about “excessive penalties against Iowa businesses that employ teens.”

Besides being illegal, Iowa’s law for teenagers doesn’t adequately protect childhood and education

There is room for well-meaning disagreement about whether the federal protections are, in fact, too strict. Advocates of Iowa’s law make a fair point that school-sponsored extracurricular activities keep students out much later than 7 or even 9 p.m. But the reasons for keeping some brakes on younger teens’ work are more compelling. Research frequently ties sleep deprivation with teenagers’ academic, social and mental health struggles. In the cases of families that are in such a precarious state that a child’s earning potential is vital to their well-being, Iowa would be better off supporting those families more directly. Children should have childhoods.

It should have gone without saying, of course, that the policy debate has nothing to do with whether businesses are required to observe the federal protections for 14- and 15-year-olds. Lawmakers and trade group leaders, and managers who kept teenagers on the clock late all colossally misjudged how this would play out, from proposal through implementation. They have only themselves to blame.

Lucas Grundmeier, on behalf of the Register’s editorial board

FURTHER READING: Iowa restaurant lobby plays stupid games, wins stupid prizes

FURTHER READING: From 1946, “Why child labor laws?”

This editorial is the opinion of the Des Moines Register’s editorial board: Carol Hunter, executive editor; Lucas Grundmeier, opinion editor; and Richard Doak and Rox Laird, editorial board members.

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