Ten Short

People-powered, AI-Generated AI-assisted draft, verified, and corrected: Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5 Edited and curated by: Guy Wolf *Disclaimer: AI has been known to malfunction “hallucinate” therefore, a human-in-the-middle approach with a separate draft and verification AI has been used to provide the best quality, most accurate apolitical research on this topic Subscribe now Congress sent the Child Labor Amendment to the states in 1924. Twenty-eight have ratified, none since 1937, and it has no deadline. Here is what it would do, why it stalled, and where the last ten states would have to come from In January 1937, the Kansas Senate voted on whether to ratify an amendment that would let Congress regulate the work of anyone under 18. The vote was a tie: 20 to 20. The Lieutenant Governor, who presides over the Senate, cast the deciding vote in favor. The House then passed the resolution.[^1] Twelve years earlier, in January 1925, Kansas had voted the amendment down.[^1] Twenty-one state senators and three House members sued to stop the change. They argued that the Lieutenant Governor had no right to break the tie, that a state cannot ratify after it has rejected, and that the amendment had simply run out of time.[^1] The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided it in 1939. The Court said the question of time was not for judges. Congress, it said, “has the final determination.”[^1] The amendment has stayed in that state ever since: not dead, not alive, and ten states short. Nine days from today, voters will choose legislators in 46 states.[^2] I want to look at who could finish what Kansas helped start. The Turn This piece follows the questions I asked of the apportionment amendment: what would happen if 38 states ratified, what ripples out, who gains, what challenges it would face, whether it would succeed on the merits, and where the votes would come from. I take no position on whether the amendment should be ratified. I use party labels only where a source or the math calls for them, and I flag advocacy sources. The short answers: Where does it stand? The National Archives (NARA) says 28 states ratified, the last in 1937, and that 10 more are needed. Congress set no deadline.[^3] Where would the 10 come from? Nine states with Democratic-run legislatures have not ratified: Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia. Even all nine would bring the count to 37. The 38th has to come from one of 13 other states, which are Republican-run, have coalition control, or have a nonpartisan legislature.[^1][^4][^5] What would it do? Nothing by itself. It would give Congress the power to “limit, regulate, and prohibit” the labor of people under 18.[^3] Congress would still have to pass a law, and federal enforcement is already thin.[^6] Who gains? I cannot give a clean partisan answer. The power could be used to tighten rules or to set a national rule that overrides stricter state ones, so the winner depends on who controls Congress. Would it survive a court challenge? A challenge based on the 89 years since the last ratification would probably run into the 1939 ruling that timeliness is for Congress. That is my reading, not legal advice, and the Court that decided it was divided.[^1] Is anyone moving? Bills to ratify have been filed in several states in recent years and none I found has passed.[^7][^8][^9][^10][^11] What Is Established The text. “The Congress shall have power to limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under eighteen years of age.” A second section says “the power of the several States is unimpaired by this article,” except that state laws are suspended to the extent needed to carry out a federal law.[^3][^9] The votes. The House passed it on April 26, 1924, by 297 to 69. The Senate passed it on June 2, 1924, by 61 to 23.[^3] The count. NARA says 28 states ratified, the last in 1937, and that 10 more are needed to reach 38. It says the amendment is “still outstanding” and gives no deadline.[^3] The Supreme Court’s 1939 opinion in Coleman v. Miller prints a state-by-state chronology that I used to check the count.[^1] The states that ratified were Arkansas, Arizona, California, Wisconsin, Montana, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Washington, West Virginia, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Indiana, Kentucky, Nevada, New Mexico, and Kansas. That is 28. One small conflict: that chronology puts Kentucky in 1936, and a Wikipedia list I read puts it in January 1937. I did not resolve that, and it does not change the count.[^1][^12] Who rejected. The Court’s chronology lists rejections by North Carolina in 1924; Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Vermont in 1925; Kentucky and Virginia in 1926; and Maryland in 1927. It lists Connecticut, Delaware, and South Dakota as refusing to ratify in 1925.[^1] Several of those states, such as Kansas, Maine, and Pennsylvania, later ratified. Massachusetts voters rejected it in a 1924 advisory vote by 697,563 to 241,461, according to one essay, and that campaign is described as a main victory for the opposition.[^13] The 22 that did not ratify. If you subtract those 28 from the 50 states, 22 remain: Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia. This is my own subtraction from the Court’s list. Alaska and Hawaii were not yet states in 1937.[^1] What federal law does now. Congress’s power over child labor today rests on its power over interstate commerce. After the Supreme Court struck down an earlier child labor law in 1918, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in 1938. NARA says the Act bars “oppressive child labor,” defined with exceptions as employing youth under 16 in any occupation, or under 18 in hazardous ones.[^3] In United States v. Darby (February 3, 1941), the Court upheld the Act’s wage and hour provisions and overruled the 1918 case: “It should be and now is overruled.”[^14] The gaps in current federal law. On farms, the Labor Department says youths 16 and older may work any farm job at any time, 12- and 13-year-olds may work outside school hours in non-hazardous jobs on farms that also employ their parents or with written parental consent, and youths of any age may work in any job at any time on a farm owned or operated by their parents, with the hazardous-work ban not applying.[^15] The fact sheet is dated December 2016, so I did not check whether rules have changed since. How enforcement looks. The Labor Department’s November 2024 report to Congress said investigators found 9,822 children employed in violation during fiscal years 2023 and 2024, with $23.2 million in penalties, and that its wage and hour investigators were at a 50-year low.[^6] A University of Cincinnati Law Review post says violations rose about 70 percent since 2018, while the Department’s report says 31 percent from 2019 to 2024. The two sources use different years and I did not reconcile them.[^16][^6] Bloomberg Law reported on May 1, 2025 that the Department of Government Efficiency had identified 21 Wage and Hour Division offices for closure.[^17] What states are doing. The Economic Policy Institute, a research group with a labor-friendly outlook, counted at least 13 states that introduced bills in 2026 to weaken child labor protections, with several enacted: Indiana (ended a youth employment documentation system), Nebraska (a $13.50 wage for 14- and 15-year-olds), Virginia (a hazardous-work exemption for 16-year-old apprentices, as amended), Washington (longer hours for work-based learning minors), and West Virginia (removing state hazardous-work bans). It counted three bills to strengthen protections, and only Oregon’s passed.[^18] The same page’s text and table disagree on a few counts, so treat the numbers as approximate.[^18] Which bills target the amendment. Maryland introduced a resolution to ratify in 2024 and again in 2025. The 2024 text says Maryland “rejected ratification” on March 18, 1927 and calls that a mistake the current Assembly wants to correct.[^19][^7] A Massachusetts resolve (S.521, filed January 16, 2025) went to the Election Laws committee, and a New York Assembly resolution (A6245, 2019–2020) was referred to the Judiciary Committee and the Attorney General and did not pass.[^8][^9] A Hawaii Senate resolution (SR 81, 2025) proposes ratification, and a Minnesota bill that only reaffirmed that state’s 1933 ratification says the Hawaii Senate passed ratification in 2021 and 2022.[^10][^20] A Nebraska resolution (LR 5, 2023) had a hearing on March 3, 2023.[^11] I found no record that any of these has passed a full legislature. Expert Consensus, and Where It Runs Out The sources agree on three things. First, the amendment is still formally pending. NARA says so, and the 1939 Supreme Court opinion held that the lapse of time was not for the courts to decide.[^3][^1] Second, it has stalled mostly for political, not legal, reasons. NARA says it stalled after a few ratifications in 1924 and 1925, “mostly because of a successful ad campaign to discredit it.”[^3] Third, the federal government can already regulate child labor in commerce. Darby settled that in 1941.[^14] Where the consensus ends: whether ratifying it now would add anything real, and whether Congress or the courts would accept a ratification that came more than a century after the proposal. Contested and Speculative “It is already law, so ratifying costs nothing.” A Nebraska senator who sponsored the resolution said “We are only ratifying what is already in law in support of Nebraska children.”[^11] That is partly true: the Fair Labor Standards Act exists. But the amendment is a power, not a rule. It would let Congress go further than today’s law, including into areas the commerce power may not reach. That is the whole point of it and also the source of the objection. “It would let the government control children.” A 2012 essay in a constitutional-education series, written by Horace Cooper of the Institute for Liberty, argued that the text reaches “work generally,” including household chores, and quoted 1920s opponents who said parents are “better prepared to pass judgment upon the needs and the welfare of their children.”[^13] The Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal William O’Connell, campaigned against it, ordering pastors to read a condemnation from the pulpit, out of concern about “the rights of families and private institutions like the Church itself.”[^21] On the plain text, the amendment gives power over “labor,” not over upbringing, and it does not itself prohibit anything. Whether a future Congress would stretch “labor” is the unknown. I found no scholarly source in this session that settles the scope of the word. “It has expired.” This is the least likely claim to win. The Supreme Court held in 1939 that Congress has the final say on lapse of time, and Congress set no deadline for this amendment.[^1][^3] The 27th Amendment became part of the Constitution in 1992 after 203 years, and Congress accepted it.[^22][^23] Two justices, Butler and McReynolds, disagreed in 1939 and said more than a reasonable time had passed, and that was after only 15 years.[^1] The Math: Where the 10 Would Come From This is my own arithmetic, from the lists above. Already ratified: 28 states. Still needed: 10. Add the nine Democratic-run states that have not ratified (Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia). Running total: 37. Still needed: 1. The last one: one of the 13 other states that have not ratified: Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas. The nine are the states on my list of 18 with Democratic-controlled legislatures that are also on the unratified list.[^4][^5] Nevada and Vermont have Democratic legislatures but divided government, and I did not check whether a governor must sign a ratification resolution, which is a state-law question.[^4][^24] What November 3 changes. Very little for the nine. None of them appears on the lists of competitive chambers I read.[^25][^26] What could change are a few of the 13: both Alaska chambers and the Georgia House are on Stateline’s list of the most competitive chambers, and Bolts lists North Carolina’s chambers among those Republicans hold that could flip.[^26][^25] A change there could matter for the 38th state, but I found no sign that any of these legislatures plans to act. If any of the nine said no. Each would have to be replaced from the 13, so the math is unforgiving. If just one of the nine did not ratify, two of the 13 would be needed, and so on. That means the Democratic-run states are close to necessary and not close to sufficient. The 22 States That Have Not Ratified For each state I give what I could verify. “Rejected” is from the Court’s 1939 chronology.[^1] The nine Democratic-run states Connecticut. Refused in 1925.[^1] A 2024 resolution, H.J. 217, is described as correcting a 1924 proposal that the General Assembly never ratified, and Wikipedia says the House passed it. I could not confirm the vote from Connecticut’s own record.[^27][^12] Delaware. Refused in 1925.[^1] Hawaii. Not a state in 1937. The Senate passed ratification in 2021 and 2022, according to a Minnesota bill’s text, and SR 81 was introduced in 2025. I did not find that the House acted.[^20][^10] Maryland. Rejected in 1927. It introduced H.J. 7 in 2024 and H.J. 3 in 2025, and the 2025 resolution went to a committee with no passage shown.[^19][^7] Massachusetts. Voters rejected it in 1924, and the 1937 chronology shows another refusal.[^1][^13] S.521 (2025) is in the Election Laws committee.[^8] New York. I found no record of any 1920s or 1930s action in the sources I read. A ratification resolution has been sitting in committee since 2019.[^9] Rhode Island. I found no record of 1920s action. A ratification bill was introduced in 2021 (S 0438), and I did not find its outcome.[^12] Vermont. Rejected in 1925.[^1] Virginia. Rejected in 1926.[^1] The 13 other states Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas. These are Republican-run, as I understand it. The Court’s chronology shows rejections by North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, and refusal by South Dakota. I found no 1920s or 1930s action for Alabama or Mississippi, and Wikipedia says Alabama took no recorded action. Wikipedia also lists Louisiana as rejecting in 1924, 1934, and 1936, which the Court’s chronology as I read it does not show, so I did not resolve it.[^1][^12] North Carolina’s chambers are listed by Bolts as Republican-held. South Carolina’s control is general knowledge I did not re-verify.[^25][^24] Alaska. Coalitions run both chambers, and Alaska was not a state in 1937.[^2] Nebraska. The legislature is nonpartisan. Nebraska has a recent resolution, LR 5 (2023).[^11] Why a Republican-Run Legislature Might Ratify, and Which Ones Because the last state has to come from outside the nine, I repeat the question I asked about the apportionment amendment. I found no Republican legislator calling for ratification. Everything below is my reasoning about motives, not a report of anyone’s plans. Reasons a Republican-run legislature might say yes. Many states that are Republican-run today are already in. Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming are among the 28.[^1] The record shows an amendment that passed Congress by wide margins and was ratified in the 1920s and 1930s, not a modern partisan label. Whether today’s legislators see it that way I cannot say. Child safety is a cross-party issue. Ohio’s governor, who is a Republican, vetoed a bill in 2025 that would have let 14- and 15-year-olds work until 9 p.m. on school nights.[^16][^24] That does not show support for the amendment, only that rollbacks do not have uniform Republican backing. Section 2 protects the states. The text says “the power of the several States is unimpaired.”[^3] A legislator who worries about federal overreach can point to that line. Reasons a Republican-run legislature might say no. Parental rights and federal power. These are the arguments of the 1920s, and they are still the arguments of critics today.[^13][^21] Employers and farms. The Nebraska Cattlemen sent a letter opposing LR 5, then asked for it to be removed from the record.[^11] An NFIB Florida official said recent Florida bills would help small employers hire younger workers.[^17] Current policy direction. Alabama and Arkansas ended youth work permits, Florida’s governor said more youth employment could replace migrant workers, and Project 2025 calls for easing hazardous-work limits for minors “with proper training and parental consent.”[^17] Missouri and Florida introduced 2026 bills for lower youth wages, and Nebraska enacted one.[^18] No Republican sponsor. I found no Republican sponsor of a ratification resolution, in any state. Which of the 13? I found no evidence on any individual state, so these are labels, not odds, and they come only from the reasons above. The only one with a live resolution (my label: closest to open). Nebraska, because LR 5 got a hearing in 2023 and a sponsor said it only restates existing law. Its legislature is nonpartisan, and a cattle group opposed it.[^11] Cannot say. Alaska, which has coalition control and no record I found. More reason to hesitate (my label: least open). Alabama, Florida, and Missouri, because of recent rollback measures I read about. The other nine, which are Republican-run in the sources I read, I place between those two groups because I found nothing either way.[^17][^18] Who Would Gain: Democrats or Republicans? I cannot give a confident answer, for four reasons. The power is neutral. The text gives Congress power to “limit, regulate, and prohibit.” Section 2 says state laws are suspended to the extent needed to carry out federal law.[^3][^9] My reading is that Congress could use it to tighten national rules, or to set one national rule that overrides stricter state ones. Which it did would depend on who held the majority. Both parties’ states are loosening rules. Of the 2026 bills in the EPI table, several came from states with Democratic-run legislatures, including Washington and Virginia, which enacted measures, and Illinois, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, which introduced them.[^18][^4] Colorado, Illinois, and Virginia also raised penalties, according to Bloomberg Law.[^17] The split runs through both parties. Within the Republican side, there is a split. Ohio’s governor vetoed a hours bill, and Project 2025 would ease hazardous-work limits.[^16][^17] Interest groups cut across parties. Employers who hire teens, farms, and family businesses are on one side. Children’s safety groups such as the Child Labor Coalition, and unions, are on the other.[^17] So my answer is that the amendment would hand a power to whoever holds Congress, and I do not think the sources I read justify calling it a Democratic or a Republican measure. What Would Happen if 38 States Ratified Day one. Nothing changes in anyone’s job. The amendment is a grant of power. Congress would have to pass a law to use it, and the President would have to sign it or Congress would have to override a veto. That is my reading of how amendments of this kind work. What Congress could do that it cannot do easily now (my analysis, labeled plausible). Congress could reach kinds of work that are not clearly “commerce,” close the farm exemption for children working on a parent’s farm, and set one national standard. It could also write rules that would keep working even if a future Supreme Court narrowed the commerce power. That last point is the main practical value: today’s authority rests on Darby, which is more than 80 years old, and the modern Court has limited the commerce power in other areas, which is general knowledge I did not re-verify.[^14][^24] What it would not fix. Enforcement. The Labor Department’s own report says its investigator ranks are at a 50-year low, and the 2025 closures that DOGE identified would reach 21 offices.[^6][^17] A grant of power does not hire a single investigator. The federal floor already exists, and states that go below it, such as those in the 2026 bills, create what one law review author calls “formally valid but functionally inert” state laws, because employers who follow them can still be fined under federal law.[^16] The Labor Department found Utah employers who followed weaker state rules and believed they were compliant.[^17] Challenges, and Whether They Would Win Challenge 1: “Too much time has passed.” Coleman v. Miller is the controlling case. It held that whether an amendment has lost vitality through lapse of time is a political question for Congress, and that Congress “has the final determination.”[^1] Two justices dissented, and a fractured Court (four justices wrote that the petitioners lacked standing) means a modern Court could take a fresh look, which is my observation.[^1] My judgment: this challenge is unlikely to win as long as Coleman stands, and it would face a precedent from the 27th Amendment, where Congress accepted a ratification 203 years after the proposal.[^22] I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. Challenge 2: “States that rejected it cannot change their minds.” The Court held that the effect of a ratification after an earlier rejection is a political question, following the Fourteenth Amendment precedent.[^1] Kansas ratified in 1937 after rejecting in 1925, and the Court let it stand.[^1] My judgment: unlikely to win. Challenge 3: “Ratifying states’ votes don’t count because of defects.” Coleman also held that courts should not stop officials from certifying a ratification.[^1] A challenge based on a procedural defect in a particular state, such as the tie-break in Kansas, would turn on that state’s law. Challenge 4: “The text is too broad.” The objection that “labor” could reach chores is political and not legal, as far as I can tell: it would be argued in Congress, in the states, and in later court cases over any law Congress passed. My judgment: this is the strongest objection on the merits and the one the 1920s coalition used.[^13][^21] Challenge 5: Getting to 38. This is the real obstacle. Bills have been filed and none has passed.[^7][^8][^9][^11] Compared with the Other Two Proposals Child Labor Amendment: 28 of 38 states, so 10 more are needed. No deadline. It gives Congress a power and changes no seats or votes.[^3] Apportionment amendment (my earlier pieces): NARA’s count is 11, so 27 more are needed. No deadline. Whether it would force a bigger House depends on a one-word reading. National Popular Vote compact (my earlier piece): 222 electoral votes of the 270 needed, by a different route that does not amend the Constitution. This is the closest of the three to done in state count, and the one most plainly tied to a current policy fight. Historical Parallels I use three. The first two draw on sources in this piece. The third is general knowledge I did not re-verify.[^24] Hammer v. Dagenhart and Darby, 1918 to 1941. Congress passed a child labor law, the Court struck it down in 1918, Congress tried a tax, which the Court also struck down, and the amendment came from that fight.[^3][^16] Darby then overruled the 1918 decision.[^14] Where it holds: the amendment is an insurance policy against the Court narrowing federal power again. Where it breaks down: Darby has stood for more than 80 years, and I found no sign that the Court plans to revisit it. The 27th Amendment, 1789 to 1992. A proposal with no deadline sat unratified for 203 years. Then Gregory Watson’s campaign reached legislatures, and Michigan’s 1992 vote was thought to be the 38th.[^22][^23] Where it holds: no deadline means no expiry, and Congress accepted it. Where it breaks down: the 27th was short, about congressional pay, and cross-party, while this one gives Congress new power and has an organized opposition’s history. The Equal Rights Amendment’s late states, 2017 to 2020. After the ERA’s 1979 deadline stalled it at 35 states, Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia ratified in 2017, 2018, and 2020, each under a Democratic-controlled legislature.[^24] Where it holds: Democratic-run legislatures can deliver late ratifications once someone asks, as the nine states here might. Where it breaks down: the ERA had an active national movement. I found no comparable campaign for this amendment, and the ERA’s deadline question does not arise here. An Outside-the-Box Lens: The Safety Factor Engineers do not build a bridge to carry exactly the load they expect. They add a safety factor, so the structure holds even if a truck is heavier than planned or a steel beam is weaker than rated. Congress’s power over child labor today is a bridge built to carry the expected load. It rests on one beam, the commerce power, as the Court read it in 1941. The amendment would add a second beam. If the Court ever narrowed the first, the second would hold. Where the analogy strains: a safety factor adds strength without adding risk, but a new grant of power can be used in more than one direction. A bridge cannot be used to loosen the rules of the road, and a power over child labor could be. Bridges also do not have parents who object to the engineer. Applying Structured Analytic Techniques I use four: Key Assumptions Check, Analysis of Competing Hypotheses, Alternative Futures, and Indicators and Warning, and I include a devil’s advocate point. Key Assumptions Check on “ratifying would make children safer.” Five things must be true. First, that Congress would use the power to tighten rules, which depends on who holds the majority. Second, that Congress would also fund enforcement, because the Labor Department’s investigator ranks are at a 50-year low.[^6] Third, that the Court would not strike down the ratification, which I judge unlikely under Coleman.[^1] Fourth, that 10 more states would act, for which I found no campaign.[^7][^8] Fifth, that the amendment would address a real gap, and the strongest gap I found is the farm exemption, which is a choice Congress already made.[^15] The best case against my framing: ratifying could be mostly symbolic. The federal floor already exists, the states that go below it face federal penalties, and the real fight is over enforcement and money, which an amendment does not touch.[^16][^6] I cannot rule this out. The amendment’s value is as insurance and as a statement, and how much that is worth is a judgment, not a fact. Analysis of Competing Hypotheses: why has ratification stalled since 1937? The four hypotheses are H1, federal law seemed enough after 1938 and 1941; H2, no organized campaign; H3, opposition on parental-rights and federalism grounds persists; and H4, many legislators assume it is already settled law. C means consistent, I means inconsistent, N means neutral. This is my own scoring. Congress passed the FLSA in 1938 and the Court upheld it in 1941.[^14] H1 C, H2 N, H3 N, H4 C. Bills have been introduced in several states and have not passed.[^7][^8][^9] H1 N, H2 C, H3 N, H4 N. A cattle group opposed the Nebraska resolution and later asked to withdraw its letter.[^11] H1 N, H2 N, H3 C, H4 N. A sponsor said the resolution only restates existing law.[^11] H1 C, H2 N, H3 N, H4 C. NARA says it stalled after 1925 because of an ad campaign.[^3] H1 N, H2 N, H3 C, H4 N. H1 and H3 fit best, with H2 and H4 not ruled out. I could not read any legislator’s reasons directly, so this is an inference. Alternative Futures: now to 2028. These are my judgments, with labels and no odds. Future 1: Nothing happens (most likely). The count stays at 28 and the bills stay in committee. Future 2: Democratic-run states ratify as a statement (plausible). A few of the nine act in 2027 sessions, the count reaches the low 30s, and the effort stalls short of 38. Future 3: Congress strengthens the statute instead (plausible). It raises penalties or funds enforcement, and the amendment stays dormant. Future 4: Rollbacks and litigation continue (plausible). More states loosen rules, employers are fined under federal law, and the dispute moves to the courts and to Congress. Future 5: A real campaign reaches 38 (unlikely). It would need all nine plus a Republican-run or nonpartisan state, and then a fight over certification. Future 6: A Republican-run state ratifies first (unlikely, but it would change the picture). I found no sign of it. Indicators and Warning. Toward ratification: a ratification resolution passing a chamber in any of the nine states; a Republican sponsor in any of the 13; a hearing on LR 5-style resolutions; a campaign by a national group. Against: new state rollback laws; Congress cutting Wage and Hour funding; a court ruling narrowing federal power over labor. On the map: November 3 results in Alaska, Georgia, and North Carolina.[^26][^25] Voices Across a Century The voices below come from the records cited. My inferences are marked. The Federalist No. 43 point is general knowledge I did not re-verify.[^24] Cardinal William O’Connell, 1924. He campaigned against it out of worry that the state could become too powerful and threaten “the rights of families and private institutions like the Church itself.”[^21] My inference: the objection was about who decides for a child, and that question has not gone away. The Women’s Constitutional League of Maryland, 1920s. It argued that parents are “better prepared to pass judgment upon the needs and the welfare of their children” than Congress.[^13] My inference: the farm exemption for children on a parent’s farm is the modern form of the same belief. Chief Justice Hughes, 1939. His opinion said Congress “has the final determination” of lapse of time.[^1] My inference: the Court chose to leave a hard question to the branch that counts the states. Justice Stone, 1941. In Darby he called the Tenth Amendment “a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered.”[^14] My inference: the federal government’s power over child labor today rests on this reading, which is why a second source of power could matter. A Maryland delegate, 2024. The resolution says Maryland’s 1927 rejection was a mistake the current Assembly wants to correct.[^19] My inference: a state can change its mind, as Kansas did in 1937. Madison in Federalist No. 43. As I recall it, he said Article V lets both the national government and the states start amendments, so neither can block change alone.[^24] My inference: the count is by state, and the last state is decisive, as it is here. Where the analogy strains: the 1920s voices argued about a Congress and an economy that no longer exist, so their arguments tell us about the themes, not about what they would say today. Second- and Third-Order Effects On the economy. It is well documented that minors work in agriculture and food service, which accounted for 1,108 of the Labor Department’s child labor compliance actions in the two years it reported, and that some employers want fewer limits.[^15][^6][^17] It is plausible that a federal law written under the amendment would raise costs for some employers, and that employers would lobby for exemptions. That is my inference. On enforcement. It is well documented that Wage and Hour investigators are at a 50-year low and that 21 offices were identified for closure.[^6][^17] It is plausible that without more investigators, a new power would change little for children already working illegally. On the courts. It is plausible that a ratification would draw lawsuits asking the Court to revisit Coleman. If it did, it could affect the 27th Amendment’s standing and any other no-deadline amendment, including the apportionment amendment I wrote about earlier. That is my inference and I found no source that says it. On families and schools. It is possible that a federal law could affect school-linked work programs and apprenticeships, which several states loosened rules for in 2026.[^18] How would depend entirely on how Congress wrote the law. On the states. It is plausible that a ratification push in the nine Democratic-run states would draw attention to those states’ own recent bills to relax youth work rules, such as Washington’s and Virginia’s. That is my inference from the EPI list.[^18] Solutions: Efforts Already Underway Federal enforcement. The Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division investigates and fines employers and reports to Congress on child labor.[^6] State laws that lock in the federal floor. Oregon enacted a law in 2026 fixing federal work-hour standards for minors as of January 1, 2026, so state rules cannot go below them. Maryland has a bill to add civil penalties and bar the executive branch from seeking FLSA waivers, and New York has one on workplace-rights information. Colorado, Illinois, and Virginia raised penalties.[^18][^17] Ratification resolutions. Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Hawaii, Connecticut, and Nebraska have had resolutions to ratify, none passed in the sources I read.[^19][^8][^9][^10][^27][^11] Advocacy and research. The Child Labor Coalition is quoted in Bloomberg Law’s reporting, and the Economic Policy Institute tracks state bills.[^17][^18] Litigation. I found no pending case on the amendment itself. Something You Can Do Today Nine days before the election, the useful move is the same whichever side you are on. Find your state legislators and their opponents. Your legislature’s website lists them. Ask each candidate two questions: whether they would vote to ratify the 1924 Child Labor Amendment, and what rule they think Congress should write if it had the power. If you live in one of the nine, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, or Virginia, ask your legislator whether they will back a ratification resolution when the new session opens. If you live in one of the other 13, ask what your legislature has said about youth work rules and why. If you want to oppose it, the same steps work: ask legislators to decline to ratify and tell them which part worries you. Whatever you think of the amendment, you can also ask your members of Congress to fund child labor enforcement, which does not need an amendment. Close The headline is a subtraction. Twenty-eight states have ratified, nine Democratic-run states have not, and even all nine would leave the count one short of 38. The last state has to come from the 13 states that are Republican-run, run by coalition, or nonpartisan. The amendment would give Congress a power and not a rule, and the best-documented problem today, thin enforcement, is not one the power solves. I found no sign that any state is close to acting, and a long record of bills that die in committee. What the record does show is that the amendment is alive: Congress set no deadline, the Court left the question to Congress, and a tie-breaking vote in a Kansas Senate in 1937 is the last time a state moved. A count that needs the other party’s states cannot be built on one party’s votes.[^3][^1][^6] 3-Minute Summary Congress sent the Child Labor Amendment to the states in 1924. It would let Congress “limit, regulate, and prohibit” the labor of people under 18. NARA says 28 states ratified, the last in 1937, and that 10 more are needed. There is no deadline. The Supreme Court held in Coleman v. Miller (1939) that whether time has run out is for Congress, not the courts. Nine states with Democratic-run legislatures have not ratified: Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia. They bring the count to 37. The 38th must come from one of 13 other states. The amendment gives a power, not a rule. Congress’s current authority rests on a 1941 ruling, so the amendment is mainly insurance. It does not fund enforcement, and the Labor Department says its investigators are at a 50-year low. Both parties’ states are loosening some youth work rules in 2026, so I cannot call the amendment a Democratic or Republican measure. Bills to ratify have been filed in Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Hawaii, Connecticut, and Nebraska, and none that I found has passed. A court challenge based on the 89-year gap would likely face Coleman, though that is my judgment and not legal advice. Something You Can Share “Twenty-eight states ratified the Child Labor Amendment, the last in 1937, and it has no deadline. Nine Democratic-run states have not ratified, and even all nine would leave it one state short.” About this analysis Original source(s) analyzed: No single external article. This piece synthesizes the National Archives’ account of the Child Labor Amendment; the Supreme Court’s opinions in Coleman v. Miller (1939) and United States v. Darby (1941); the Labor Department’s fact sheet and November 2024 report to Congress; reporting and analysis from Bloomberg Law, the Economic Policy Institute, and the University of Cincinnati Law Review; state bill texts and pages from Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Hawaii, Minnesota, and Connecticut; a Nebraska Examiner report; a 2012 Constituting America essay and a Catholic University exhibit on 1920s opposition; the Wikipedia page on the amendment, used only for items marked in its footnote; and the legislative-control sources from my earlier piece “Twelve, Not Twenty-Seven.” No prediction-market or betting-platform source is used. Date written: October 25, 2026. AI model and version: Claude Sonnet 5.5. Training cutoff and verification note: This model’s reliable training cutoff is mid-2026, with the most recent months less reliable. Dates, counts, vote tallies, bill details, court holdings, and quotations from the sources above were live-search-verified through summaries of web pages and PDFs, not the full text of each, and several sources are advocacy, partisan-leaning, or secondary, which the footnotes name. I did not read the full text of either Supreme Court opinion. Following the series’ practice of preferring primary sources, I took the lists of ratifying and rejecting states from the 1939 opinion’s chronology and not from Wikipedia. The following rest on general knowledge predating the training cutoff and were not re-verified: the party of Ohio’s governor, who controls South Carolina’s legislature, how the modern Court has treated the commerce power, how a law under the amendment would be enacted, the Equal Rights Amendment’s late ratifications, Federalist No. 43, and the safety-factor idea. The list of nine Democratic-run states that have not ratified, the 13 other states, the arithmetic, the groupings of states as “closest to open” and “least open,” the readings of what Congress could do under the text, the evidence-scoring list, the futures, and the likelihood labels are my own analysis and not drawn from a source. Things I did not verify or could not find: any ratification resolution passed by a full legislature in 2025 or 2026; whether any governor must sign a ratification resolution; Connecticut’s 2024 House vote; the outcome of Rhode Island’s 2021 bill; Louisiana’s 1920s and 1930s actions, where Wikipedia and the Court’s chronology differ; Kentucky’s ratification date (1936 or January 1937); any current Labor Department change to the 2016 farm fact sheet; a scholarly view on the scope of the word “labor”; and the results of the November 3 elections, which have not happened. The Labor Department’s 31 percent rise in violations (2019 to 2024) and the 70 percent figure in a law review post (since 2018) conflict and I did not reconcile them. Counts and bills move, and these were current on the dates given only. Sources & Further Reading National Archives, “Unratified Amendments: Regulating Child Labor,” Prologue blog, prologue.blogs.archives.gov Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433 (1939), and United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100 (1941), govinfo.gov U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, Fact Sheet #40 and Report to Congress on child labor enforcement, fiscal years 2023 and 2024, dol.gov Bloomberg Law, “Trump DOL Cuts and State Bills Threaten Child Labor Protections,” May 1, 2025; Economic Policy Institute, “State lawmakers continued to weaken child labor protections in 2026”; Maggie Traubert, “Below the Floor,” University of Cincinnati Law Review Blog, March 16, 2026 State bill texts: Maryland HJ 7 (2024) and HJ 3 (2025); Massachusetts S.521; New York A6245; Hawaii SR 81 (2025); Minnesota HF 2171; Connecticut HJ 217 (2024); Nebraska LR 5 (2023) via the Nebraska Examiner Horace Cooper, “Proposed Amendment: Child Labor Ban,” Constituting America (2012); Catholic University exhibit, “Conservative Critics and the End of Reform: the 1920s”; Wikipedia, “Child Labor Amendment” (secondary) State legislative-control sources from my earlier piece “Twelve, Not Twenty-Seven”: Ballotpedia, NCSL, Bolts, and Stateline My earlier pieces in this series: “Twelve, Not Twenty-Seven,” “A Ceiling, Not a Floor,” and “Zero of Thirty-Eight” [^1]: The facts and holdings of Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433 (1939) (the Child Labor Amendment proposed in 1924; Kansas rejecting it in January 1925; the January 1937 Kansas Senate tie of 20 to 20 broken by the Lieutenant Governor, and the House’s later adoption; the suit by 21 senators and three House members; the holdings that the effect of a ratification after an earlier rejection is a political question, that courts should not stop certification, and that whether the amendment lost vitality through lapse of time is not for the courts, with “the Congress in controlling the promulgation of the adoption of a constitutional amendment has the final determination”; the opinion by Chief Justice Hughes; the concurrence by Justice Black joined by Justices Roberts, Frankfurter, and Douglas on standing; the dissent by Justice Butler joined by Justice McReynolds; and the chronology of states that ratified, rejected, or refused through 1937) are documented in the opinion as printed at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USREPORTS-307/pdf/USREPORTS-307-433.pdf, live-search-verified through summaries of the PDF, which I requested twice (once for the holdings and once for the chronology). The summaries said the syllabus and the opinion differ on whether the Kansas judgment was affirmed or reversed, said one dissent’s author was illegible, and put Kentucky’s ratification in 1936, while a Wikipedia list I read gives January 13, 1937. I did not read the full opinion myself and did not resolve these points. The list of 22 states that did not ratify is my own subtraction. [^2]: The October 23, 2026 counts (Republican majorities in 57 of 99 chambers, Democratic in 39, and 3 power-sharing or split; 88 of 99 chambers in 46 states up on November 3; 18 battleground chambers, of which Republicans control 10, Democrats 5, and 3 are split; the trifecta and supermajority lists; seats held) are documented in Ballotpedia News, “Eighty-eight of the 99 state legislative chambers are up for election this year,” https://news.ballotpedia.org/2026/10/23/eighty-eight-of-the-99-state-legislative-chambers-are-up-for-election-this-year/, live-search-verified through a summary of the page. The page does not list which chambers are expected to change hands. [^3]: The amendment’s text (both sections); the House vote of 297 to 69 on April 26, 1924 and the Senate vote of 61 to 23 on June 2, 1924; the statements that 28 states ratified, the last in 1937, that 10 more are needed to reach 38, that it is “still outstanding” with no deadline, that it stalled “mostly because of a successful ad campaign to discredit it”; the 1918 and 1922 Supreme Court rulings against earlier child labor laws; and the description of the Fair Labor Standards Act’s “oppressive child labor” are documented in the National Archives, Prologue blog, “Unratified Amendments: Regulating Child Labor,” March 24, 2020, https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2020/03/24/unratified-amendments-regulating-child-labor/, live-search-verified through a summary of the page. The summary said the page does not name the cases, any rejecting states, or Kansas or Coleman. [^4]: The statements that as of October 25, 2026 there are 23 Republican trifectas, 16 Democratic, and 11 divided governments, and the lists of Democratic trifectas (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington in the excerpt) and divided-government states (including Nevada and Vermont) are documented in Ballotpedia, “State government trifectas,” https://ballotpedia.org/State_government_trifectas, live-search-verified through a summary of the page. The summary said the table excerpt stopped at Maryland and did not show Rhode Island, and that the divided list it showed (12 states) did not match the page’s count of 11, so some entries may be outdated. My list of 18 Democratic legislatures, which adds Nevada and Vermont and Rhode Island, is my own assembly and matches NCSL’s count of 18. [^5]: The control of state legislatures as of October 6, 2026 (28 Republican, 18 Democratic, 3 divided in the summary; Republican trifectas in 23 states; Nebraska excluded; Maine’s classification inconsistent between the table rows and the summary) is documented in the National Conference of State Legislatures, “State Partisan Composition,” https://www.ncsl.org/about-state-legislatures/state-partisan-composition, live-search-verified through a summary of the page. The data predate the November 3, 2026 elections. Statements in my text that the governors of Nevada, Wisconsin, Arizona, and North Carolina are not Republicans (and that the Nevada governor is not a Democrat) are my inferences from which states appear in the trifecta lists, and I did not check each governor separately. [^6]: The figures (9,822 young workers found employed in violation in fiscal years 2023 and 2024; 1,691 compliance actions; $23,203,878 in civil money penalties; 867 children in hazardous-order violations; a 31 percent rise in children found in violation from 2019 to 2024; more than 1,000 open investigations; investigative ranks at “a 50-year low”; 1,108 food-service compliance actions) are documented in the U.S. Department of Labor, Report to Congress, Enforcement of the Child Labor Provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, fiscal years 2023 and 2024 (November 2024), https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WHD/child-labor/child-labor-report-congress_2023-2024.pdf, live-search-verified through a summary of the PDF. The summary gave two-year totals only and no investigator headcount. [^7]: The statement that Maryland House Joint Resolution 3 (2025) would ratify the amendment, introduced January 8, 2025 and assigned to a committee with no passage shown, saying “ratification by 10 more states is required,” is documented at https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/2025RS/bills/hj/hj0003f.pdf, which I read through a summary in an earlier round of this conversation and did not reopen today. [^8]: The facts of Massachusetts Senate No. 521 (194th General Court; filed January 16, 2025 by Senator Jason M. Lewis “by request” on a petition by Vincent Dixon; referred to the Election Laws committee; noting that 28 states ratified, that 10 more are needed, and that Massachusetts voters rejected it in 1924) are documented at https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/S521.Html, live-search-verified through a summary of the page. It showed no further action. [^9]: The facts of New York Assembly bill A6245 (2019 to 2020; Assemblymember Barnwell; a concurrent resolution to ratify; the text of the amendment including that state power is unimpaired except that state laws are suspended to the extent needed to give effect to congressional legislation; referred to the Judiciary Committee and to the Attorney General for an opinion on March 8, 2019 and January 17, 2020; no passage in either house; a Senate version S1661 listed with no status) are documented at https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/A6245, live-search-verified through a summary of the page. [^10]: The statements that Hawaii Senate Resolution 81 (Thirty-third Legislature, Regular Session of 2025) proposes ratification, that it says “only twenty-eight states had ratified it,” that the amendment “is still outstanding,” that 15 states rejected it and did not later ratify, and that Hawaii is one of seven states with “no record of taking action” are documented at https://data.capitol.hawaii.gov/sessions/session2025/bills/SR81_.HTM, live-search-verified through a summary of the page. The summary did not name a sponsor and showed no vote or adoption date. [^11]: The facts of Nebraska Legislative Resolution 5 (2023) to ratify the Child Labor Amendment (Senator Carol Blood of Bellevue; Executive Board hearing on March 3, 2023; quotations from Blood, Garret Swanson of the Holland Children’s Movement, and Anahi Salazar of Voices for Children in Nebraska; the letter from the Nebraska Cattlemen opposing it and their later request to remove it from the record) are documented in Nebraska Examiner, “Supporters of child labor resolution say it could make Nebraska new champion,” March 3, 2023, https://nebraskaexaminer.com/briefs/supporters-of-child-labor-resolution-say-it-could-make-nebraska-new-champion/, live-search-verified through a summary of the page. The summary did not give Blood’s party or the resolution’s outcome. I did not find any later action on LR 5. [^12]: The statements that Wikipedia’s list of states that rejected the amendment includes Louisiana (1924, 1934, 1936), that Alabama and Rhode Island took no recorded action, that Hawaii’s Senate passed a resolution in 2021 and 2022, that Connecticut’s House passed one in 2024 without a Senate vote, that New Hampshire’s House adopted a resolution reaffirming its ratification in 2024, and that resolutions were introduced in New York, Rhode Island, Nebraska, Maryland, and Minnesota are from the Wikipedia page “Child Labor Amendment,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Labor_Amendment, live-search-verified through a summary of the page. It is a secondary source. Following the series’ practice of preferring primary sources, I took the list of ratifying and rejecting states from the Supreme Court’s 1939 chronology and used Wikipedia only for the items marked here, and I did not verify Rhode Island’s bill outcome (S 0438, 2021) or the Connecticut vote. [^13]: The essay’s statements (supporters including the NEA, the American Legion, the YWCA, and the PTA; the opponents the Women’s Constitutional League of Maryland, the Catholic Church, Lutherans, and farmers; the quotation “better prepared to pass judgment upon the needs and the welfare of their children”; its reading that the text reaches “work generally,” including household chores; the Archbishop of Boston’s statement that it would “take from parents the right and duty to educate and guide their children”; and Massachusetts’s advisory-referendum result of 697,563 to 241,461) are documented in Horace Cooper, “Proposed Amendment: Child Labor Ban,” Essay #87, “Analyzing the Amendments” series, Constituting America, June 2012, https://constitutingamerica.org/?p=3046, live-search-verified through a summary of the page. The essay is skeptical of federal child labor power, and the summary said the page states no organizational position. It is the author’s view. [^14]: The holding in United States v. Darby (decided February 3, 1941; opinion by Justice Stone) that the Fair Labor Standards Act’s wage and hour provisions were within the commerce power and did not violate the Fifth or Tenth Amendments, the sentence “It should be and now is overruled” about Hammer v. Dagenhart, and the description of the Tenth Amendment as “but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered” are documented in the opinion at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USREPORTS-312/pdf/USREPORTS-312-100.pdf, live-search-verified through a summary of the PDF. The summary noted that the case concerned the Act’s wage and hour provisions and not child labor directly. [^15]: The federal rules for minors in agricultural work (youths 16 and older may work any farm job at any time; 14 and 15 outside school hours in non-hazardous jobs; 12 and 13 on farms that employ their parents or with written parental consent; any age at any time in any job on a farm owned or operated by their parents, with the hazardous-occupation ban not applying there; hazardous work barred under 16; examples such as tractors over 20 PTO horsepower) are documented in the U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, Fact Sheet #40, https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/40-child-labor-farms, live-search-verified through a summary of the page. The page is marked “Revised December 2016,” so rules may have changed since. [^16]: The statements that FLSA sets a federal floor that states cannot go below; the examples of Iowa (2023), Arkansas, and Ohio (a 2025 bill vetoed by Governor DeWine); the “zombie laws,” “formally valid but functionally inert,” and “treat the federal floor as an optional ceiling” language; the claim that Department of Labor-reported violations rose about 70 percent since 2018; and the references to Hammer v. Dagenhart are documented in Maggie Traubert, “Below the Floor: How States are Challenging Federal Child Labor Law,” University of Cincinnati Law Review Blog, March 16, 2026, https://uclawreview.org/2026/03/16/below-the-floor-how-states-are-challenging-federal-child-labor-law/, live-search-verified through a summary of the page. It is a law-student commentary, and its 70 percent figure differs from the Labor Department’s own 31 percent for 2019 to 2024, which I did not reconcile. [^17]: The statements that the Department of Government Efficiency identified 21 Wage and Hour Division offices for closure; that Alabama and Arkansas eliminated youth work permits, West Virginia SB 427 eliminated permit requirements, and Washington eased hours for some 16- and 17-year-olds; that Colorado, Illinois, and Virginia increased penalties; that Florida’s governor said more youth employment could replace migrant workers; that Project 2025 calls for easing hazardous-work limits for minors “with proper training and parental consent”; the Utah cases; and the quotations from Jessica Looman, Reid Maki, Tim Nungesser, and others are documented in Bloomberg Law, Daily Labor Report, Chris Marr and Rebecca Rainey, “Trump DOL Cuts and State Bills Threaten Child Labor Protections,” May 1, 2025, https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/trump-dol-cuts-and-state-bills-threaten-child-labor-protections, live-search-verified through a summary of the page. The summary said it gave no staffing, budget, or violation figures. The Child Labor Coalition and NFIB Florida represent a children’s advocacy network and a small-business group, respectively. [^18]: The counts (at least 13 states introducing weakening bills in 2026; the enacted measures in Indiana, Nebraska, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia; the introduced bills in Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; the failed bills in Florida, Iowa, and West Virginia; three strengthening bills introduced versus 15 in 2025; Oregon’s enacted law fixing federal work-hour standards as of January 1, 2026; the Maryland and New York bills) are documented in the Economic Policy Institute, “State lawmakers continued to weaken child labor protections in 2026: Efforts to strengthen protections have stalled,” https://www.epi.org/blog/state-lawmakers-continued-to-weaken-child-labor-protections-in-2026-efforts-to-strengthen-protections-have-stalled/, live-search-verified through a summary of the page. EPI is a research group with a labor-friendly outlook. The page carries no date, and the summary found that its text says four states enacted weakening bills while its table lists five, and that its count of strengthening bills does not match the states it names, so the numbers are approximate. [^19]: The facts of Maryland House Joint Resolution 7 (2024 session; Delegate Ruth; introduced February 9, 2024; assigned to Rules and Executive Nominations; stating that the General Assembly “rejected ratification” on March 18, 1927, that this was a mistake it wants to correct, that only 28 states had ratified by 1937, and that 10 more are needed) are documented at https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/2024RS/bills/hj/hj0007F.pdf, live-search-verified through a summary of the PDF. The summary gave no first name for the sponsor and no final action. [^20]: The statements that Minnesota House File 2171 (2025) only reaffirms Minnesota’s 1933 ratification and memorializes Congress, was returned to committee on May 19, 2025, and cites Hawaii Senate passage of a ratification in 2021 and 2022 are documented at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/94/2025/0/HF/2171/versions/0/pdf, which I read through a summary in an earlier round of this conversation and did not reopen today. [^21]: The statements that Cardinal William O’Connell of Boston campaigned against the amendment, ordered pastors to read a condemning statement from the pulpit, worried about the state becoming too powerful and threatening “the rights of families and private institutions like the Church itself,” and that Massachusetts voters rejected it by over three to one, nearly four to one in Boston, are documented in a Catholic University exhibit, “Conservative Critics and the End of Reform: the 1920s,” https://cuomeka2.wrlc.org/exhibits/show/bishops/hiatus/1919hiatus-intro, live-search-verified through a summary of the page. The summary said the page does not discuss opposition from farm groups or manufacturers. [^22]: The statements that Archivist Don W. Wilson proclaimed the 27th Amendment ratified on May 18, 1992 (it had been completed May 7), acting on advice from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, under 1 U.S.C. § 106b, and that the House and Senate each later passed a concurrent resolution recognizing it (H. Con. Res. 320 and S. Con. Res. 120, 102d Congress) are documented in Constitution Annotated (via Cornell’s Legal Information Institute), “Ratification of the Twenty-Seventh Amendment,” https://law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-27/ratification-of-the-twenty-seventh-amendment, live-search-verified through a summary of the page. The page gave no vote counts for the resolutions. [^23]: The dates for the 27th Amendment (Maine ratifying first after Gregory Watson’s campaign on April 27, 1983; Michigan’s May 7, 1992 ratification thought to be the 38th) are documented in the National Archives, Prologue blog, “A Record-Setting Amendment,” April 11, 2016, https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2016/04/11/a-record-setting-amendment/, which I read in an earlier round of this conversation (and cited in my candidates list) and did not re-open today. [^24]: The statements that Ohio’s governor is a Republican; that North Carolina’s and South Carolina’s legislatures are controlled by Republicans (North Carolina’s chambers appear in Bolts’ list of Republican-held chambers that could flip, and I did not verify South Carolina’s control); that the modern Supreme Court has limited the commerce power in other areas; that Congress would need the President’s signature or a veto override to enact a law under the amendment; that a governor may or may not need to sign a state ratification resolution (a state-law question I did not check); the Equal Rights Amendment ratifications by Nevada (2017), Illinois (2018), and Virginia (2020) under Democratic-controlled legislatures and the 1979 ERA deadline; Madison’s argument in Federalist No. 43 that Article V lets both the national government and the states originate amendments; and the engineering idea of a safety factor are general knowledge predating this model’s training cutoff and were not re-verified in this session. The count of nine unratified Democratic-run states, the 13 other states, and the arithmetic in the math section are my own. [^25]: The list of chambers that may flip or where a supermajority is at stake (Democratic-held chambers that could flip: Maine House and Senate, Michigan Senate, Minnesota Senate, Pennsylvania House; Republican-held chambers in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin; the Alaska and Minnesota House cases; and the Democratic supermajority targets), plus the chamber margins (Michigan House 58-52 Republican and Senate 20-18 Democratic; Minnesota House tied and a one-seat Democratic Senate majority; Arizona needing four House and three Senate seats; Alaska coalition holding 21 of 40 House seats), are documented in Bolts, “Your Cheat Sheet to the 2026 General Elections,” dated October 1, 2026 and last modified October 25, 2026, https://boltsmag.org/whats-on-the-ballot/guide-to-2026-general-election/, live-search-verified through a summary of the first part of the page (the final portion was not read). Bolts is a publication that covers elections and local politics from a progressive perspective. [^26]: The list of 15 most competitive chambers according to Sabato’s Crystal Ball (both Alaska chambers, both Arizona, the Georgia House, the Maine House, both Michigan, both Minnesota, both New Hampshire, the Pennsylvania Senate, and both Wisconsin) and Louis Jacobson’s list of 15 Republican-held chambers where Democrats could cut majorities or break supermajorities are documented in Kevin Hardy, “Democrats could flip legislative chambers, break GOP supermajorities, analysis finds,” Stateline, October 16-17, 2026, as carried by Kiowa County Press, https://kiowacountypress.net/content/democrats-could-flip-legislative-chambers-break-gop-supermajorities-analysis-finds, live-search-verified through a summary of the page. The summary said the article gives no rating categories and its counts of current control do not fully reconcile. I could not open Stateline’s own page or Sabato’s. [^27]: The statements that Connecticut House Joint Resolution 217 (2024) would ratify the amendment, that it is described as correcting a 1924 proposal the General Assembly never ratified, and that the page lists earlier filings (HJ 48, SR 109, HR 105, SR 102) are documented in the Legiplex bill page at https://app.legiplex.com/lpx/bill/21631, live-search-verified through a summary of the page. The page gave no vote tallies, sponsors, or final status. I could not open Connecticut’s own page for HJ 48 because it was not available to me.