Transphobic legislator introduces bill to force kids to work full-time on farms

Transphobic Indiana state Rep. Joanna King (R) has introduced a bill that would change state child labor laws to allow minors to drop out of school after 8th grade to go work full-time on family and corporate farms. She has previously supported a bill that bans minors from accessing gender-affirming care.

King proposed’s bill, HB 1062, would allow minors as young as 14 to drop out of middle school and begin working 40 hours a week, year-round, during school hours. The law would allow these children to work on family- and corporate-owned farms. Some children are forced by their families to work on these farms to help alleviate poverty, according to the National Farm Worker Ministry.

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“Farm owners are not required to pay overtime and, in many cases, smaller farms are even exempt from the minimum wage,” political writer Robyn Pennacchia noted. “They are also allowed to hire children as young as 12 — and, even, under certain circumstances, kids as young as 10.”

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Indiana law does not specify any limitations on maximum working hours for minors under 16 who are engaged in agricultural work, according to Minimum-Wage.org, an online labor law resource. State law also doesn’t limit the kinds of work children can be asked to do, though federal law does.

Child farmworkers often work 10 or 12 hours a day in “grueling” and “backbreaking” conditions, exposed to pesticides, extreme heat, heavy machinery, and other dangers, according to Human Rights Watch. The group notes that agriculture is the deadliest work sector for child laborers in the U.S., with thousands injured on farms every year.

Pennacchia noted that, while King approves of parents deciding when to end their child’s education and force them into demanding agricultural labor, King opposes parents helping their children obtain gender-affirming care.

In 2023, King supported her state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. The law not only prohibits trans youth from both gender-affirming medication and surgery, but it also requires youth already undergoing care to detransition.

“This is good public policy to protect our children from irreversible, harmful, life-altering procedures,” King said of the law. However, most major American medical and psychiatric associations say that gender-affirming care is safe, effective, and essential for trans minors’ overall well-being.

Barely a month after Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb (D) signed the ban into law, U.S. District Court Judge James Patrick Hanlon — a judge appointed by transphobic former President Donald Trump — issued an injunction to keep the ban from going into effect.

Hanlon wrote that plaintiffs had “some likelihood of success” on their claims that the ban was unconstitutional.

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