Facts
- Sarah Prince, a Jehovah’s Witness and ordained minister, had legal custody of her nine-year-old niece, Betty Simmons.
- Prince brought Betty to a business area in Brockton, Massachusetts, where the child distributed and offered religious magazines to passersby for a small price while Prince supervised nearby.
- Massachusetts law barred boys under 12 and girls under 18 from selling or offering to sell periodicals or other merchandise on public streets, and prohibited guardians from permitting such work and adults from furnishing items knowing they would be sold unlawfully.
- After prior warnings, Prince was charged with (1) refusing to disclose the child’s identity and age to an officer, (2) furnishing magazines knowing they would be sold on the street, and (3) permitting the child to work in violation of the statute.
- Prince was convicted on the furnishing and permitting counts; the convictions were affirmed by the state’s highest court.
Issues
- Whether applying the child-labor statute to a guardian supervising a child’s religious literature distribution violated the Free Exercise Clause as applied through the Fourteenth Amendment.
- Whether the application infringed parental/guardian rights protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
- Whether the application denied equal protection by discriminating against religious activity or a particular faith.
Decision
- The Supreme Court affirmed the convictions in a 5–4 decision.
- The Court accepted the state court’s determination that the child’s activity fell within the statute’s coverage (street selling/offering to sell and “work”) and addressed only the federal constitutional claims.
- The Court held that neither free exercise rights nor parental/guardian authority is beyond limitation, and that the state may regulate children’s public street activities more broadly than adults’ conduct.
- The Court concluded that the statute’s application was a permissible exercise of the state’s authority, as parens patriae, to protect children from harms associated with street peddling and child labor.
- The Court rejected the equal protection claim because the restriction applied generally to minors and did not single out a religious group.
Legal Principles
- States may limit a child’s participation in public street solicitation and similar activities, even when religiously motivated and supervised by a parent or guardian, to protect the child’s welfare.
- Parental and free exercise rights are subject to reasonable regulation when the state acts to safeguard children from risks tied to labor and public street activity.
- A neutral, generally applicable child-protection law that does not target religion does not violate equal protection merely because it burdens a religious practice.
Conclusion
The Court held that Massachusetts could apply its child-labor restrictions to prevent a guardian from having a minor distribute and offer religious literature on public streets, because the state’s child-welfare interest permits limits on religiously motivated conduct involving children and the law applied without religious discrimination.