Minor Child Definition for Form LM-30 Labor Organization Officer and Employee Report

DEPARTMENT OF LABOR <SUBAGY>Office of Labor-Management Standards</SUBAGY> <CFR>29 CFR Part 404</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket #]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN #1245-AA16</RIN> <SUBJECT>Minor Child Definition for Form LM-30 Labor Organization Officer and Employee Report</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Labor-Management Standards, Department of Labor. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This proposed rule is soliciting public comments regarding revisions to the definition of “minor child” as that term appears in 29 CFR 404.1(h) and on the Form LM-30 Labor Organization Officer and Employee Report. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before July 31, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments, identified by RIN 1245-AA16, by the following method: <E T="03">Internet:</E> Federal eRulemaking Portal. Electronic comments may be submitted through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> . To locate the proposed rule, use RIN 1245-AA16. Follow the instructions for submitting comments. Only comments submitted through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> will be accepted. Comments will be available for public inspection at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> . The Department will post all comments received on <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> without making any change to the comments, including any personal information provided. The <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov</E> website is the Federal e-rulemaking portal and all comments posted there are available and accessible to the public. The Department cautions commenters not to include personal information such as Social Security numbers, personal addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses in their comments as such submitted information will become viewable by the public via the <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> website. It is the responsibility of the commenter to safeguard this information. Comments submitted through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> will not include the commenter's email address unless the commenter chooses to include that information as part of his or her comment. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Andrew Davis, Director of the Office of Program Operations, Office of Labor-Management Standards, U.S. Department of Labor, 200 Constitution Avenue NW, Room N-5609, Washington, DC 20210, by telephone at (202) 693-0123 (this is not a toll-free number), 711 (TTY/TDD), or by email at <E T="03">olms-public@dol.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> The Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA), 29 U.S.C. 401 <E T="03">et seq.,</E> mandates certain reporting and disclosure requirements for labor organizations, their officers and employees, employers, labor relations consultants, and surety companies. Every officer or employee of a labor organization who, or whose spouse or their “minor child,” directly or indirectly holds any interest or derives any income or benefit from an employer whose employees the labor organization represents, or from a business that deals with the labor organization or a business that deals in substantial part with a represented employer of the union, or has received certain payments from a labor relations consultant, is required to file an annual financial disclosure report with the Secretary of Labor. 29 U.S.C. 432. The Secretary of Labor has authority to prescribe the form of the financial disclosure reports required by the LMRDA. 29 U.S.C. 438. The U.S. Department of Labor (Department), Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) proposes to amend its regulations under the LMRDA, 29 CFR part 404, to revise the definition of “minor child” on the Form LM-30 Labor Organization Officer and Employee Report, which requires labor union officers and employees to report actual or potential conflicts of interest involving their own personal financial interests, as well as that of their spouse or “minor child,” and that of their labor organization. In 2007, OLMS issued a final rule defining “minor child” as a “son, daughter, stepson, or stepdaughter under 21 years of age.” 72 FR 36106 (July 2, 2007). OLMS reasoned that because the LMRDA is silent about the age at which a child reaches their majority, there needed to be a uniform, nationwide definition that Form LM-30 filers, union members, and the public can easily ascertain and 21 was sensible as the age of majority in most states at the time of the LMRDA passage. <E T="03">See generally</E> 72 FR 36106. In light of the statutory silence on the age at which a child reaches majority, OLMS reasoned that age 21 was sensible because there needed to be a uniform, nationwide definition that Form LM-30 filers, union members, and the public could easily ascertain, and that 21 was already the age of majority in most states at the time of LMRDA passage. <E T="03">See</E> Labor Organization Office and Employee Report, Form LM-30, 72 FR 36145 (July 2, 2007). <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Discussion</HD> The Department is proposing to amend its regulations to redefine “minor child” as a son, daughter, stepson, or stepdaughter under the age of 18. This change aligns with the age of majority now recognized in almost all United States jurisdictions, where individuals are generally considered legal adults at 18. A total of 47 states and Washington, DC, have set the law of majority at 18, leaving only Alabama and Nebraska at age 19, and Mississippi at age 21. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> By adopting this widely accepted standard, OLMS seeks to reduce the reporting burden on filers, while preserving the integrity and purpose of the LMRDA's disclosure requirements. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See age of majority | Wex | US Law | LII/Legal Information Institute.</E> </FTNT> The proposed amendment reflects the understanding that individuals aged 18 and older are considered capable of managing their own financial affairs and are legally responsible for their actions. In most areas of law, including voting, contracts, and military service, adulthood begins at age 18. Requiring disclosure of financial interests or transactions involving children or stepchildren aged 18 to 20 may impose unnecessary administrative burdens on filers without meaningfully advancing transparency or detection of conflicts of interest, as union officials do not have legal control over their children who reach the age of majority. The Department believes that limiting the definition of “minor child” to those under 18 maintains the effective requirement without unduly burdening filers with tracking the financial interests and transactions of other adult individuals. The Department therefore proposes to revise the definition of “minor child” in 29 CFR 404.1(h) to read: “Minor child means a son, daughter, stepson, or stepdaughter under 18 years of age.” The Department also proposes to revise the definition on page two of the Form LM-30 Instructions to read: “MINOR CHILD—means a son, daughter, stepson, or stepdaughter under 18 years of age.” Additionally, the Department proposes to make a technical correction on page 6 of the Form LM-30 Instructions in Item 7, NATURE AND AMOUNT OF INTEREST, TRANSACTION, BENEFIT, ARRANGEMENT, INCOME, OR LOAN, by deleting: “If you need additional space, see the “How to Provide Additional Information” section on page 3” . . . . “(for information on where to provide this explanation, see the “How to Provide Additional Information” section on page 3)” . . . . “(See the “How to Provide Additional Information” section on page 3.).” The instructions on page 6 no longer need this language, as page 3 does not contain any instructions on providing additional information, nor is such instruction needed to complete the form. The Department invites public comment on this proposed rule, including general and specific comment on any aspect of the rule. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Procedural Issues and Regulatory Review</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Review Under Executive Orders 12866</HD> Executive Order (E.O.) 12866, “Regulatory Planning and Review,” 58 FR 51735 (Oct. 4, 1993), requires agencies, to the extent permitted by law, to (1) propose or adopt a regulation only upon a reasoned determination that its benefits justify its costs (recognizing that some benefits and costs are difficult to quantify); (2) tailor regulations to impose the least burden on society, consistent with obtaining regulatory objectives, taking into account, among other things, and to the extent practicable, the costs of cumulative regulations; (3) select, in choosing among alternative regulatory approaches, those approaches that maximize net benefits; (4) to the extent feasible, specify performance objectives, rather than specifying the behavior or manner of compliance that regulated entities must adopt; and (5) identify and assess available alternatives to direct regulation, including providing economic incentives to encourage the desired behavior, such as user fees or marketable permits, or providing information upon which choices can be made by the public. Section 6(a) of E.O. 12866 also requires agencies to submit “significant regulatory actions” to OIRA for review. OIRA has determined that this proposed rule does not constitute a “significant regulatory action” under section 3(f) of E.O. 12866, as it reduces reporting and recordkeeping burden for filers and potential filers. Accordingly, this proposed rule was not submitted to OIRA for review under E.O. 12866. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Review Under the Regulatory Flexibility Act</HD> The Regulatory Flexibility Act (5 U.S.C. 601 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) requires preparation of an initial regulatory flexibility analysis (IRFA) and a ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━