In this episode we re-argue the Supreme Court case Prince v. Massachusetts.
Massachusetts has adopted child labor laws prohibiting children from selling periodicals on the street, and prohibiting adults from making children work illegally. SP is a Jehovah’s Witness who would distribute religious literature on the street. Her children and her niece begged and cried to join her. SP was confronted by authorities, charged, and ultimately convicted of violating child labor laws. SP says that the government is using inapplicable law to interfere with her parental rights, and her and the child’s religious freedom.
The question before the court: do the state laws prohibiting child labor interfere with parental rights and religious freedoms?
References
Drabiak, K. (2020). Disentangling dicta: Prince v. Massachusetts, police power and childhood vaccine policy. Annals of Health Law, 29, 173-210.
Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158 (1944)
Richardson, J.T. (2015). In defense of religious rights: Jehovah’s Witness legal cases around the world. In S. Hunt (Ed.), Handbook of global contemporary Christianity (pp. 285-307). Brill.
Tharpe, K.A. (2005). Train up a child in the way he should go: The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Supreme Court cases of the early 1940s. [Undergraduate capstone thesis, Western Kentucky University]. Western Kentucky University TopSCHOLAR. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1188&context=stu_hon_theses