Jude and Angela Doty believe in instilling a strong work ethic in their seven children
and have clashed with the state over how they have gone about it.
Posted on 07/08/2004 8:32:22 AM PDT by ppaul
Labor laws and personal beliefs collide
YAKIMA Jude Doty has spent the past 15 years whittling his life philosophy down to a motto: home birth, home school and home business.
To live by those words, he says, is his right.
To fight for them is fundamental.
From the head of his sturdy dining-room table, Doty speaks rapid-fire about his efforts to preserve his family amid a society he says is eroding around him. His Bible lies near one hand, a history book near the other.
Doty's fight has pitted him against the state, which says he violated child-labor laws by bringing his two eldest sons, Zach, now 15, and Stephen, 12, to work at his construction business. The resulting fines have effectively put him out of business and could cost him the very thing that's central to his ideology: his home.
Jude and Angela Doty believe in instilling a strong work ethic in their seven children
and have clashed with the state over how they have gone about it.
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He says he's willing to fight the state as long as it takes. The law, Doty says, should make exceptions for kids working with their parents, even if the work is dangerous. He wonders why his family is being singled out when kids can hop on a snowmobile or run a combine without the state stepping in.
As Doty makes his case, his wife, Angela, drifts in and out of the dining room, rising at intervals to tend to their seven children and to fix lunch. The boys are outside, flying down hills on their horses. The baby is crying upstairs.
All this activity is typical in the Dotys' renovated colonial home, which also serves as a school, church and recreational center for the family of Christian fundamentalists. As someone practices the piano, Doty explains that he's raising his eldest sons to be followers of the Lord: hard workers and good Christians, like boys were a century ago.
"Youth in the past were productive," he said. "Young men should be like trees, producing fruit."
But the state Department of Labor & Industries says Doty is exposing his boys to jobs that are simply too dangerous for kids so young. A state administrative-law judge recently ruled against Doty, but he has appealed the ruling in the hope that the laws will change.
L&I officials say Doty's case is the most tenacious campaign they've seen against child-labor standards. They say it could force the state to change its laws.
"This could be something big," said Reuel Paradis, Yakima regional administrator for the department. "This could be absolutely business as usual or the Department of Labor and Industries misinterpreting the public policy, and then that becomes pretty earth-shattering."
Backhoes and bulldozers
The dispute started in January 2003, when Doty's house-moving business was hired to move a block of houses to make room for Yakima Memorial Hospital's expansion. L&I received several phone calls, some from Doty's co-workers, who were alarmed at the work Zach and Stephen were doing for their dad.
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The boys, 13 and 11 at the time, were riding on the peak of a house as it moved down the street, callers reported, pushing up low-hanging traffic lights. They were flagging traffic at construction sites, driving bulldozers and backhoes, and they seldom if ever wore protective gear. Fueling fears for the boys' safety, a backhoe flipped with Zach inside. "My bottom line is that these children should have an opportunity to survive to adulthood," Paradis said. "I absolutely support [Doty] in his contention that he was in the right to teach his children a work ethic, but I also really believe that there are jobs that aren't appropriate for some age groups."
Child-labor laws in the United States were put into effect in 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which also established a minimum wage and overtime laws. Changes have been rare.
Washington laws, updated in 1991, are more strict than federal ones. They put tighter limits on when kids can work, for how long and in what occupations.
State laws say no one under 18 is allowed to do the kind of work the boys were doing, and the rules explicitly prohibit children from working backhoes and bulldozers, flagging traffic and working on rooftops.
In February 2003, Yakima Superior Court issued a preliminary injunction that banned the kids from all of their father's construction sites. Doty contested the order, but the court upheld it. L&I fined him $26,000 for the labor violations; he appealed.
In late May, a state administrative-law judge ruled in favor of L&I, saying that children who work for their parents are not exempt from child-labor laws.
"Children 11 and 13 years of age are generally inexperienced at exercising sound and independent judgment necessary for work in inherently dangerous activities," wrote the judge, Chris Blas. "Mere supervision in these occupations is insufficient to cure the inherent dangers."
Doty says he was expecting the ruling and has appealed it to the director of L&I. From there, the case could be appealed to Yakima County Superior Court.
Paradis is confident that his department will prevail. But if Doty wins, L&I will take a hard look at the rules, he said.
This isn't the first time Doty's beliefs have run counter to the law. He's been arrested a dozen times, he says, maybe more. In 1983, he was charged with third-degree assault after spanking an 18-month-old boy with a stick, Kittitas County Superior Court records show. Doty, who believes in corporal punishment, was running a homeless shelter in Ellensburg at the time and disciplined the boy, with his mother's permission, for "acting up at the supper table." A jury found him not guilty.
He's also been battling L&I on other fronts. He has been audited five times since 1990 for such violations as failing to have industrial insurance and inaccurately reporting employees' hours. He was fined $107,000 for erroneously reporting hours for workers-compensation insurance and $4,400 for violating state health-and-safety laws.
Fighting it has tied up all his assets, Doty says. Half his construction equipment has been repossessed, and he's lost his contractor's license and insurance, he said. He hasn't been able to move a house in more than a year. Without income, he and his family have been scrimping by, he said, and his home is being foreclosed on.
Despite everything, he remains optimistic.
"I think I'll come out pretty well," he said. "But in the meantime, it's brutal."
Although the Dotys say they aren't anti-government, they keep to themselves and believe the strongest influences on family should come from religion.
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Doty and his wife, a certified home-school teacher and former Christian-school teacher, teach their kids at home because public schools don't teach the Christian religion. Conservative literature and history are important in their education, but faith looms larger than anything else.
Faith, Doty says, will sustain his family.
"I have a big-enough vision and a great-enough God to keep [this family] intact," he said.
The Dotys are not alone in their belief that work is an important part of education.
The home-school movement often butts heads with federal labor law, said Chris Klicka, senior counsel with the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, a national nonprofit advocacy group. Some home-school supporters believe children should be taught skills in apprentice-type situations, but laws prohibit work that takes place during school hours.
Klicka cited the Michigan case of a home-schooled girl who was prohibited by state child-labor laws from practicing sign language as an interpreter in a public school because she would have been working there during school hours.
"We're into modern living, and there's so much more available to a child and more preparation that they need for life," Klicka said. "Times have changed, and labor laws need to change with them."
Instilling a work ethic
Doty learned his work ethic as one of seven children raised on a farm in Indiana. Public school failed him, he said, and he received most of his education on the farm.
The work was dangerous. When he was 8 or 9, he cut off four fingers at the knuckle while using a buzz saw. They were sewn back on.
"Losing an arm or a leg is not the end of the world," he said. "But losing your soul would be a bad situation."
Doty was supervising his sons' work and knows it was hazardous. But for him, that's not the point.
For his wife, overseeing children is the key in teaching them to go it alone. Having the boys work with their father, she says, is like learning to cook: Kids are taught under a watchful eye until they're ready to handle a hot stove.
Angela Doty says her boys enjoy working with their dad because it provides them a strong male role model and a set of skills.
"[They've] got a dad that cares," she said. "My children beg to go to work with their dad."
Zach and Stephen say they are itching to get back to work. Leaning on the desk in the family's school room, their eyes light up when they talk about the equipment they operated and the time they spent with their dad.
The Dotys say numerous activities, skateboarding, snowmobiling and horseback riding, to name a few, imperil children far more than construction work does.
And Jude Doty wants to know why kids on farms can use tractors, combines and other heavy machinery while his boys are banned from backhoes.
The answer is steeped in history and politics, says James Gregory, a history professor at the University of Washington who specializes in labor studies. In Washington and across the country, farms are treated differently than the industrial world.
"We have a strong tradition of thinking about farming as sort of noble and protected and nonindustrial," Gregory said. "Someone that says, 'I want my kids to work with me on the family farm,' seems to be saying something a little different than, 'I want my kids to work with me at the factory.' "
There is an inherent contradiction in that position, he acknowledges, but he says lawmakers have to draw the line somewhere.
"This is a reasonable distinction," he said, "not a perfect one."
On top of that, farm lobbies are wealthy, powerful and tough to beat. Few people are willing to take on such a venerable institution.
'I'm doing right'
Doty's lawyer, Raymond Alexander, says L&I is interpreting child-labor laws too broadly. Doty's sons should be exempt because they are his children, not his employees, Alexander says.
"L&I is basically saying that anytime any parent has their child do any work that isn't housework or farm work, they're going to be considered an employee," Alexander said. "That has staggering ramifications."
Alexander wants the laws rewritten to make it easier for parents to teach their kids skills and a work ethic.
But relaxing the rules could open the system to abuse, Paradis said. It could allow parents to work their kids in any way they like.
If a judge rules for the state, the boys will be considered Doty's employees and be subject to child-labor laws. They would not be allowed to work with him.
If a ruling goes Doty's way, the boys could return to the job sites and resume their training, but with restrictions: Doty would have to comply with state health-and-safety rules and federal labor laws, so the boys wouldn't be able to do a lot of the work they were doing: no driving backhoes, no working on rooftops, no directing traffic.
While the case plays out, Doty lingers around the house to spend time with the boys, watching his livelihood wither and feeling attacked. His patience is wearing thin.
"I'm not going to be sheepish about it, and I'm not going to be apologetic," he said. "I'm doing right."
Lisa Heyamoto: 206-464-2149 or lheyamoto@seattletimes.com
True. Liability insurance serves to make sure that third-parties injuries are paid for by the party responsible for causing them, rather than the injured party or society as a whole.
From a law and economic point of view, liability insurance is the most efficient way to handle injuries to third parties.
You would put your 11 year old on top of a roof to dodge traffic lights and electrical wires?
OK. Doty's been nailed for fraudulently misreporting hours worked on his workman's comp, and he's trying to make it sound like the authorities are pickin' on him because of how he raises his kids--which, BTW, wins no kudos from me, because he's acting like a damn fool. There are some jobs that children should not be doing--such as operating heavy equipment.
Parents can and should be held to account for risking their kids' lives and limbs in a fashion that no reasonbly prudent man would do. (My father was on a US Navy Board of Inquiry that infamously defined "a reasonably prudent man" as "a man who checks for toilet paper before sitting down.") I don't think it should be spelled out in painstaking detail; I'd just leave it to the common sense of a jury to decide.
And in our country, i.e. Innocent until proven guilty, that means you are innocent, i.e. finding one 'not guilty' in the USA is continuing their 'assumed' innocence. No splitting of hairs, just the results are the same. But you make a good point as we all remember OJ!! ;-)
I live across from a homeschooling family of 8. The 8-year-old boy is on the roof helping Dad, the little ones down below. Older kids on roof, too. Nothing bad has ever happened to them, but they do seem to take huge risks.
appreciate the heads up and you were wise!! ;-)
I don' know how long this lady is going to last, practicing such honest journalism. I just hope she has compromising pictures, showing her editor to be a closet heterosexual.
lol it's amazing to see otherwise "conservative" thinking people take the side of guvmint when it doesn't fit into their little description of what should and should not be allowed.
The best description of Rights as I see it, is if I cannot legally tell you not to do something, then neither can the state.
I can legally keep you from murdering someone. When it comes to teaching your child work ethics or morals or your beliefs, that is none of my business.
Neither is it the business of the Bolshevik statists.
" Allowing kids to work on construction sites clearly falls under this definition."
Go stick it!
No one could have stopped me from working construction when I was 14. It was illegal, I knew it and did it anyway, it was my choice.
I'm 66 and still working construction and hopefully will be able to continue to do it until i'm at least 80, haven't killed myself yet.
Fair enough.
Yes, and I can legally keep you from having your small children operate heavy machinery on or around my property, because it imposes an unreasonable risk of damage or injury to me.
I'm not sure that works. The state can stop me from comitting harm to other people, whereas you might not be able to. For example, the state can arrest me for stealing a candy bar from a store, but you probably could not (unless you were a store owner).
I can legally keep you from murdering someone. When it comes to teaching your child work ethics or morals or your beliefs, that is none of my business.
Nobody is trying to stop him from teaching his kids ethics or morals. He's committed insurance fraud and put his kids in dangerous situations.
OK. In that case, I will sign on to your idea--if you, in turn, accept that the parents get the death penalty if their child (or anyone else) is killed incidental to the child doing work that reasonably prudent individuals would judge too dangerous for someone of that age to perform.
Sticking a 13-year-old on a backhoe is, IMNHO, just inviting the Grim Reaper to show up.
Insurance fraud and child endangerment are what made America great, dagnabit! (end loopy libertarian argument)
We don't let kids consent to certain activities, no matter how ready they are. Would it be okay if the family business was a strip club and dad wanted his teenage daughters to acquire a work ethic by giving lap dances?
To quote P.J. O'Rourke: "Liberals are afraid of gun-toting religious fanatics in the US. Hell, the US was FOUNDED by gun-toting religious fanatics."
You're full of it!
A good friend of mine was operating a cat and crane at 12 and could do the job just as well if not better than the union hacks that his dad was employing. He could dig a hole and sink a gas station fuel tank faster and with more precision than any of the rest of them with a crane and clamshell.
" We don't let kids consent to certain activities, no matter how ready they are."
You better define who "we" is!
Yes, and I can legally keep you from having your small children operate heavy machinery on or around my property, because it imposes an unreasonable risk of damage or injury to me
But you try to tell me the same thing on my property or at my business and I'll tell you to go shove it.
My point is made. My rights end where yours begin.
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