Students employed in nursing home run by church are not protected by child labor laws

The Secretary of Labor sued the Laurelbrook Sanitarium and School, Inc., run by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, arguing that the church violated child labor laws in the manner in which it required boarding school students to provide care in the Laurelbrook 50-bed nursing home.   The Court engaged in an analysis of the "benefits each party received" in the student-employee relationship and concluded that the primary benefit of the work performed by the students ran to them and not to the school or nursing home.  On that basis, the students were ineligible for protection under the child labor laws.