Child Labor in Entertainment Why is the entertainment industry exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act? I have no idea how to research this question. edit: I mean, I thought the constitution specifies that laws shall be equally enforced.
There is a specific exemption in 29 USC 213(c)(3) that The provisions of section 212 of this title relating to child labor shall not apply to any child employed as an actor or performer in motion pictures or theatrical productions, or in radio or television productions. See this article for further analysis, a propos state laws. Incidentally, the act defines "oppressive child labor" as: a condition of employment under which (1) any employee under the age of sixteen years is employed by an employer (other than a parent or a person standing in place of a parent employing his own child or a child in his custody under the age of sixteen years in an occupation other than manufacturing or mining or an occupation found by the Secretary of Labor to be particularly hazardous for the employment of children between the ages of sixteen and eighteen years or detrimental to their health or well-being) in any occupation, or (2) any employee between the ages of sixteen and eighteen years is employed by an employer in any occupation which the Secretary of Labor shall find and by order declare to be particularly hazardous for the employment of children between such ages or detrimental to their health or well-being; but oppressive child labor shall not be deemed to exist by virtue of the employment in any occupation of any person with respect to whom the employer shall have on file an unexpired certificate issued and held pursuant to regulations of the Secretary of Labor certifying that such person is above the oppressive child-labor age. The Secretary of Labor shall provide by regulation or by order that the employment of employees between the ages of fourteen and sixteen years in occupations other than manufacturing and mining shall not be deemed to constitute oppressive child labor if and to the extent that the Secretary of Labor determines that such employment is confined to periods which will not interfere with their schooling and to conditions which will not interfere with their health and well-being. Without the statutory exemption, if you are under 16 and employed by a non-parent, in any occupation, that is oppressive child labor. But because of the specific exemption, what would otherwise be statutorily oppressive child labor is allowed. The political "why" question (why did the bill contain such language) is extremely difficult to answer. The only substantive clues that I have seen are in a 1959 dissertation by G.E. Paulsen and this article on the passage of the act. It seems to be a legislative compromise relating stricter original standards, and was particularly driven by the need to allow children to work on family farms. The relevant clause was added from the floor of the House on May 24, 1938 by Rep Charles Kramer (CA). This is recorded on p. 7441 of the Congressional Record, which, unfortunately, is not freely available online. The two toughest questions were asked by Schneider (WI), Kramer's reply in parentheses: The gentleman's amendment would exempt children engaged only in the making of moving pictures? (The gentleman is correct) There are very few young people employed in that occupation? (Very few. There are hardly more than 10 employed at one time.) Shirley Temple was in fact invoked by Kramer.
You are correct that the federal law does not prohibit sex discrimination in &quot;public accommodations&quot;, the category that includes your examples. State laws tend to be more restrictive, see for example Washington's RCW 49.60.215 which declares that It shall be an unfair practice for any person ... to commit an act which ... results in any distinction ... except for conditions and limitations established by law and applicable to all persons, regardless of race, creed... sexual orientation, sex... PROVIDED, That behavior or actions constituting a risk to property or other persons can be grounds for refusal and shall not constitute an unfair practice. The definitions allow for a few exceptions as to what kind of place is so restricted, most notably a facility &quot;which is by its nature distinctly private&quot;, nor &quot;any educational facility, columbarium, crematory, mausoleum, or cemetery operated or maintained by a bona fide religious or sectarian institution&quot;. Here is a paper that summarizes the situation with women'-only clubs. For example, New Jersey law has the exception that nothing herein contained shall be construed to bar any place of public accommodation which is in its nature reasonably restricted exclusively to individuals of one sex, and which shall include but not be limited to any summer camp, day camp or resort camp, bathhouse, dressing room, swimming pool, gymnasium, comfort station, dispensary, clinic or hospital, or school or educational institution which is restricted exclusively to individuals of one sex... So it depends on the state, but most states prohibit any sex discrimination in public accommodations.
It may &quot;seem[] normative&quot; that &quot;a law cannot enumerate any specific persons or companies to be included or excluded from its provisions.&quot; But in fact it is not generally the case. There are various kinds of laws that traditionally have named specific people or entities to define their scope. These include: In nineteenth-century England, a divorce could only be granted by a specific law passed by Parliament, naming the persons to be divorced. I am not sure when the practice stopped. In the US during the nineteenth century (and I think the early twentieth century also) a corporation was normally formed by a specific law granting a charter of incorporation to the named company. In the US during the period 1866-1870 there were a number of laws passed permitting former Confederate officers and officials who were presented by the 14th amendment from holding office under the US or any state to hold office again, as the amendment provides for. Eventually Congress passed a more general amnesty. It was once common for the English Parliament to pass bills of attainder. These were legislative declarations that a particular person was guilty of a particular crime, generally without any trial or other process. Sometimes the specific sentence was also imposed by such a bill. This was sufficiently resented that the US Constitution specifically forbids Congress or any state from passing such a bill. It was once common for actual laws to grant payments to specific people for specific purposes. This is no longer common, but there is no legal bar to it in either the UK or the US that I know of. The UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 contains a provision enabling Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children to continue to receive royalties for performances and adaptations, publications and broadcast of &quot;Peter Pan&quot; whose author, J. M. Barrie, had given his copyright to the hospital in 1929, later confirmed in his will. This right is to persist even after the expiration of ordinary copyright for the play, but is not a full grant of copyright. Laws or ordinances invoking eminent domain to take the property of particular individuals for particular purposes are common, mostly at the local level. In the US, the Equal Protection Clause generally forbids laws which treat people, or groups of people, differently unless there is some rational basis for the distinction. But in some cases a plausible basis is asserted and such laws are passed.
A government always has standing to enforce violations of its own laws in its own jurisdiction. The harm to its legally protected interest is its interest in enforcing its own laws. While the forum here is a civil action, the basic concept is the same one that authorizes a government to enforce its own criminal laws. Also, a government agency may seek fines and not merely compensatory damages or liquidated damages in lieu of compensatory damages, unlike private litigants in civil actions. A civil government enforcement action is civil in the sense that only monetary damages and injunctive relief are sought, rather than incarceration, and that the court rules for civil actions apply (and as a result, the constitutional rights of criminal defendants are not invoked). But from a standing/political theory/legal theory perspective, this is almost like a quasi-criminal action in which restitution for the victims is also sought. Many labor, consumer protection, health, safety and environmental laws authorize enforcement by a state agency through the attorney general, or in the alternative, by private litigants acting as a &quot;private attorney general.&quot; In the area of employment discrimination, the usual situation is that you must first seek relief by filing a complaint with the appropriate agency, and then have a private cause of action to enforce your rights associated with the complaint only if and when the agency decides not to pursue the case with its own resources. The harassment involved here is being conceptualized as a form of employment discrimination that is subject to that kind of regime. This arrangement is legislatively favored because it provides a means by which people who can't afford attorneys can obtain relief.
Everything is allowed unless the law says it isn’t Common law systems like the USA are ‘exceptions based’ - the law permits everything except what it prohibits. So, your question is backwards - rather than looking for laws that allow it, you need to look for laws that prohibit, restrict or regulate it. There are laws that regulate this but none that prohibit it.
I've answered this in the context of US patent law, but similar principles apply elsewhere in the world. As stated in 35 USC 271, "whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent". Thus, a patent provides the patent owner with the right to exclude others from performing these actions, and the right to sue anyone who does perform these actions (both to stop them from infringing the patent, and to collect monetary damages for their infringement). Creating an infringing product and then licensing it under the GPL (or any other scheme) does not change the fact that it infringes a patent. 35 USC 271 also states that "Whoever actively induces infringement of a patent shall be liable as an infringer". This means that, even if the creator of the infringing product does not perform any infringing acts in the US, the act of offering it for free use could be construed as induced infringement of the patent, and they could still be sued for that infringement.
There is a saying that you can't sue city hall: that is applicable here. Governments enjoy sovereign immunity, and cannot be sued for their errors of judgment unless they specifically allow it. Safety regulations are an example of a situation where the government hold all of the power and shoulders none of the responsibility. If a government forbids sale or use of a substance on some grounds (could be safety, could be economic impact, could be something about preventing the moral decay of society), and the grounds later turns to be false, you cannot sue the government because of lost business opportunities. Generally speaking, that which is not prohibited is allowed, so there would have to be an affirmative duty for the government to prevent all forms of harm. If there were such a legal duty, there is a miniscule legal foundation for suing the government for shirking its duty. That is not a completely hypothetical possibility, in that the state of Washington imposes a constitutional duty on the legislature to provide public education, and the Supreme Court has done things to enforce this duty (the contempt of court fines are up in the realm of $80 million). Since there is no jurisdiction that imposes a duty on the government to absolutely prevent all harm, you won't be able to sue the government if they fail to outlaw a thing that is eventually proven to harm someone.
I will only address this part of the question: Who would be able to authoritatively decide the constitutionality of such a question, with all Supreme Court justices having clear conflict of interest on the matter? The Supreme Court could still hear such a case, as the justices make their own decisions about when to recuse themselves. In particular, they might decide to hear the case based on the "Rule of Necessity", which says roughly that a biased judge is better than none at all: a judge can hear a case, even in the presence of a conflict of interest, if there is no other way for it to be heard. See United States v. Will, 449 U.S. 200 (1980), in which the Supreme Court ruled 8-0 that federal courts could try a case related to the salaries of federal judges. Another possibility is that the case could be brought in a lower federal court, say District Court. There is a question here: the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction in "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls" (US Constitution, Article III, Section 2), and I do not know whether Supreme Court justices are "public Ministers". However, if a lower court did have jurisdiction, it could rule on the constitutionality of the question, since a District Court judge would not have a significant conflict of interest. The relevant Circuit Court of Appeals could presumably hear an appeal. If the Circuit Court's ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court felt that they all had conflicts of interest (and decided not to invoke the Rule of Necessity), then they could simply not vote to grant certiorari, in which case the Circuit Court's ruling would stand.