Florida Loosens Child Labor Restrictions, Effective July 1, 2024

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July 1, 2024

Effective July 1, 2024, Florida House Bill (HB) 49 amends Florida’s Child Labor Law to ease certain restrictions on child labor and allow parents and school superintendents to waive the thirty-hours-per-week work limitation.

The federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) governs child labor by setting minimum standards and occupational limitations, but states can enact more restrictive child labor laws.  Florida is one of the states that elected to adopt more protective child labor laws, but HB 49 now relaxes those protections in the following key ways:

• Minors aged 16 and 17 are now permitted to:
  • work before 6:30am and after 11:00pm, so long as school is not scheduled the following day;
  • work more than eight hours on holidays or Sundays, even though school is scheduled the following day; and
  • work for more than 30 hours per week when school is in session by allowing a parent or custodian, or the school superintendent, to waive the limitation on a form prescribed by Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) and provided to the minor’s employer.
• Lowers the age restriction on minors working more than six consecutive days from 17 years of age to 15 years of age.
• Removes work hour restrictions for certain minors and creates opportunities for the restrictions to be waived by the DBPR under certain circumstances such as:
  • minors “enrolled in an educational institution who qualify on a hardship basis, such as economic necessity or family emergency”;
  • minors aged 16 and 17 who are either home-schooled or who are “enrolled in an approved virtual instruction program in which the minor is separated from the teacher by time only”; and
  • minors working “in domestic service in private homes” or “employed by their parents.

The new law also makes it clear that employers that violate employment restrictions on minors could be subject to a separate and distinct misdemeanor for each day a minor employee works in violation of the restrictions under Florida law.

Employers in Florida and all states should closely scrutinize their policies and practices with respect to employment of minors.  Specifically, employers should require certificates of age as part of the hiring process for minors, as well as encourage compliance through training, signage, and reporting strategies.

Special thanks to Nicole Kime, our paralegal, for her contributions to this article.

  This article is designed to provide one perspective regarding recent legal developments, and is not intended to serve as legal advice, nor does it establish an attorney-client relationship with any reader of the article where one does not exist.  Always consult an attorney with specific legal issues.