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“So essentially, we just moved it down from 19 to 18. Kept all the requirements that were for the 19-year-old. And then also, if you’re going to a grocery store purchasing alcoholic beverages, it allows someone at 18 years old to be able to ring up [the purchase],” said bill author Sen. Linda Rogers, R-Granger.

The house third reading of the bill enjoyed largely bipartisan support with most democrats voting yes with 81 yeas and 10 nays, 6 of which were democrat and 4 Republican. However, in the Senate, the bill had no support from democrats, and passed with 31 all republican yeas to 13 nays with two republicans crossing over party lines to vote no.

Similar laws have passed in seven other states, including Michigan, where the age to serve alcohol is 17 as of 2022, and Kentucky, where the alcohol serving age went from 20 to 18. In 2021, West Virginia lowered its alcohol service age from 18 to 16 for service and bartending. Wisconsin recently attempted to no avail to lower the alcohol serving age from 18 to 14 to combatworkforce issues.

Sen. Rodney Pol, D-Portage, who opposed the bill, is concerned about losing the maturity a 19-year-old has over an 18-year-old in high school and how that can affect employees.

“The whole reason that those regulations apply was to stop kids from, you know, from potentially falling victim to peer pressure, and serving people that were underage, that were their peers,” Pol said.

Pol also said he believes the law is potentially putting high schoolers in a position serving at restaurants and having peers as clientele, which he and the Democratic caucus felt was inappropriate and may pressure the server to serve their alcohol to their underage friends.

“If they were 19, they are out of high school … they are not beholden to the same friend groups and the same peer pressure that you would feel in high school to essentially break the law,” he said.

Aside from the alcohol provision, the bill also gives a little more leeway to employers in managing teen workers. When employers hire five or more minors, they are required to report the employment to the Department of Labor. Before SB 146 became law, employers only had three days from the day a youth started working to report their employment or changes to their employment, which Rogers said was hard to do considering the nature of hiring youth in school. Now, employers can report changes on or before the fifteenth and last business day of each month.

“It’s hard to know when you hire a teenager, because you may hire a teenager in March saying they’re going to go to work for you in June, when they’re out of school. So we included that the date is the date they first start their job,” said Rogers.

Rogers, owns Juday Creek Golf Course, has had her fair share of working with teens.

“I’ve been an employer for 50 years, being in the service industry, you hire teenagers, and many of them work, and they will work in the summer, they may not work at all during the school year, and then come back the following summer,” Rogers said. “And so they’re really never leaving your employment. But yet, they may just ask for time off. And so what the bill does is just essentially provides, you know, a little more flexibility for the employer knowing when that teenager has actually formally left the employment.”

SB 146 also now allows a 10-minute grace period for young employees to punch out. For 14- to 15-year-olds, after Labor Day through June 1, they can only work until 7:00 p.m. previously if they punched out even a minute later, that resulted in a fine to the business which Rogers says happened a fair amount.

Without the bill, Rogers is concerned that well-meaning employees could cost employers.

“And when you have someone that’s 14 or 15, you will tell them, starting at 6:30 or a quarter till seven ‘OK, you can go ahead and punch out.’ Well, let’s say they’re in the middle of doing something, good employees will try to finish what they’re doing, Rogers said, “and they may realize, oh gosh, it’s after seven, or maybe where they punch out is not in close proximity where they’re working. So this gives a little bit more flexibility to an employer in that instance.”

Ashton Eller spoke on behalf of the Indiana Chamber Foundation of Commerce an organization that commissions policy research, takes action and finds solutions for Indiana’s economy.

“It’s kind of early, juries still out on it, but anytime you make an adjustment like this, it will probably be helpful to the economy,” Eller said. “Mainly the restaurant hospitality industry, to give them more access to labor, and it also gives individuals that are in that area from 19 now to 18 more ability to get a job that they may so desire. So we look at that as a positive aspect.”

Eller noted that although the bill could be helpful in providing businesses access to labor, the Indiana Chamber remained neutral on it during the legislative session due to the bill not addressing young people getting experience that could help them qualify for higher-paying jobs in the future.

“We’d just like to see individuals, when they are actually getting these jobs, that they’re getting a credential at these entry-level type jobs, to bring them up to a higher paying job, and that wasn’t addressed in this legislation,” he said. “So for that reason, we just remain neutral, but we do respect the fact that it could help with Indiana’s workforce shortage, and that is important.”