Sponsors (7)
Introduced November 17, 2025 by Raul Ruiz · Last progress November 17, 2025
The bill significantly strengthens federal protections, enforcement, and data collection to protect children in agriculture, at the trade-off of substantial new compliance costs and administrative burdens for small farms and employers, possible short-term income losses for some families, and privacy and enforcement risks that will require careful implementation.
Children in agricultural work (and their families) gain substantially stronger health and safety protections — bans on <14 employment, limits on hours and hazardous tasks for teens, prohibition on pesticide-handler tasks, and presumptions for work-related illness — reducing injuries, poisonings, and exploitation.
Child and teen workers receive stronger enforcement and deterrence: higher civil penalties, new criminal penalties for willful/repeat hazardous-work violations, and presumptions that speed enforcement and compensation for minors harmed on the job.
Parents, communities, and agencies get better data and transparency about agricultural child labor hazards through mandatory employer incident reporting and consolidated annual federal reports, enabling targeted prevention and policy responses.
Small farms and other employers face substantial new compliance costs and administrative burdens — immediate reporting requirements, data collection within five days, new documentation, and exposure to higher fines — which could strain small operations and raise prices or reduce hiring.
Some teens and low-income farm families may lose income or access to higher‑paying (but risky) jobs because of age-based bans and tightened hazardous-work rules, increasing short-term financial stress for those families.
Enhanced enforcement could increase immigration enforcement risks or deter reporting among undocumented farmworker families, leaving the most vulnerable children less likely to get protections or remedies.
Based on analysis of 10 sections of legislative text.
Tightens child-labor rules in agriculture, bans under‑18 pesticide handlers, raises civil/criminal penalties, and requires employer reporting and federal data collection on youth injuries and deaths.
Strengthens federal protections for children working in agriculture by narrowing age-based exemptions, banning children under 18 from serving as pesticide handlers, increasing civil and criminal penalties for child-labor violations that cause serious harm or death, and creating mandatory employer reporting and federal data collection on injuries, illnesses, and deaths of agricultural workers under 18. The Department of Labor must issue implementing rules on a tight timeline and publish annual reports summarizing data and potential violations.