Indiana
Lawmakers could scrap child labor reporting in Indiana
Indiana lawmakers discuss bill allowing data centers without public input
The House narrowly passed the bill after its author promised to improve it in the Senate.
- The Indiana Senate is considering a bill that would totally eliminate Indiana’s child labor reporting system.
- Employers would no longer be required to register and track minors on their payroll.
- It’s the latest effort to roll back child labor protections in Indiana.
Indiana lawmakers are once again moving to weaken state child labor laws.
Recent changes to House Bill 1302 would do away with the Indiana Department of Labor’s Youth Employment System, a database where employers are required to register and track minors 17 years old and younger on their payroll.
Doing away with the system could make it more difficult to estimate just how many Hoosier youth are working across the state at any given time.
According to the most recent legislative fiscal note on the bill, “the change will likely reduce the efficiency of on-site employer inspections for compliance with child labor laws since employers will no longer have to indicate that they employ workers younger than 18.”
State Rep. Jake Teshka, R-New Liberty, the bill’s author, confirmed that the amendments go a lot further than the version of the bill passed by the House with a 92-0 vote on Jan. 28. That version made only a minor adjustment to the mandated reporting timeline for employers.
But amendments made in the Senate’s Pensions and Labor Committee strike all of the provisions about the database from state law. The changes repeal the mandate for the labor department to maintain the database, employer reporting requirements and penalties for failing to report and track teen workers.
Teshka said he was still gathering details about the new changes. The newer version of the bill, sponsored by Sen. Linda Rogers, R-Granger, will go to the full Senate on Feb. 16. It could get a straight up and down vote as early as Feb. 17. Rogers did not respond to a request for comment.
In 2024, Rogers, who owns a golf course that is registered to employ minors, cosponsored legislation that increased work hours for teens. She also put forth legislation to reduce the age at which teens can sell and serve alcohol in hotels and restaurants from 19 to 18. Both bills were signed into law.
Teshka said he’ll have an opportunity to concur or dissent to the changes if it passes the Senate. For now, he intends to have more conversations with people in the Department of Labor, industry and education to identify the best way forward.
Department of Labor attorney Brent Cullers told a House committee last month there were 40 violations for reporting requirements in 2025. Employers appealed half of them because of confusion over the timeline to report the employment status of their under 18 workers.
“We’ve heard from some employers of youth that they would maybe hire more, but the [reporting] program has actually become something that’s burdensome to them,” Teshka said Jan. 13.
The Youth Employment System launched in 2021. Prior to the database, schools certified a teen worker’s age and academic standing.
Current Indiana law requires employers to register in the database if they have at least five teens on payroll. The database contains the names, ages and hire dates of youth as well as the email addresses, number of minor employees, and the names of each registered employer. Employers who do not comply with the reporting requirement can face penalties up to $400 per infraction, per minor employee.
If the reporting system is eliminated, “it would not change any of the laws around youth employment and the way youth in our state can be employed,” Teshka said, “and that goes to the number of hours they can work and when they can work and the types of jobs they can work.”
Like other red states, Indiana has eased child labor laws since 2019. In recent years, lawmakers have eliminated teen work permits, expanded work hours for older teens, shifted oversight of the teenage workforce from the Indiana Department of Education to the Labor Department, eliminated mandatory rest breaks and exempted businesses employing fewer than five teens from registering them with the state.
Last year, an IndyStar analysis of Indiana child labor violations found a steady increase in the number of teens under 18 working hazardous jobs. Labor law violations involving teens hit a nine-year high in 2023.
Teshka said he understood concerns that attempts to do away with the database are another means to weaken labor laws protecting minors. He said there needs to be balance because teens do learn soft skills by working.
“We don’t want to make it so restrictive that we are icing out youth from certain businesses and those sorts of things,” said Teshka. “But, we also want to make sure that we’re doing it in a responsible way.”
This story may be updated.
Contact IndyStar investigative reporter Alexandria Burris at aburris@gannett.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @allyburris and on Bluesky at@allymburris.bsky.social.