The Farm the Children Paid For
Saturday, May 23, 2026
Pennsylvania Capital-Star · https://penncapital-star.com/labor/the-labor-shortage-will-only-get-worse-trump-deportation-plans-could-hit-pa-agriculture-hard/
A church called it rehabilitation and vocational training. A federal court called it $670,000 in wages it never paid to children as young as 12.
What's happening
On May 19, 2026, Law360 reported that a federal judge declined to undo her ruling that a church-run Pennsylvania farm put children as young as 12 to work without pay. The December 2025 ruling by U.S. District Judge Yvette Kane granted summary judgment for the Department of Labor against the Mennonite Messianic Mission, operator of Liberty Ridge Farm in Juniata County, which the church calls a "rehabilitation center for troubled children." The mission argued the children were "residents," not employees, and their labor was "vocational training." The court found they "did not voluntarily join or participate." The farm earned over $500,000 from goods the children produced. The mission owes $669,607.83 in back wages plus an equal sum in damages.
What the Text says
The court found the violations "willful." The Department of Labor told the defendants in December 2021 that they owed fair wages, and the payments still did not come. Scripture is unusually exact about this mechanism.
Jeremiah 22:13Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his rooms by injustice; who uses his neighbor's service without wages, and doesn't give him his hire;
The original target was King Jehoiakim, who built a cedar palace with conscripted labor while Jerusalem strained under Babylon's shadow. The Hebrew word translated "service" is re'ehu, his neighbor, his fellow. Jeremiah does not accuse the king of stealing money. He accuses him of building. The palace was real, the rooms were real, the cedar paneling was real, and every beam of it rested on labor the king never paid for. The prophet's charge is structural: an enterprise can be sound, even impressive, and still be built on injustice from the foundation up. Jehoiakim assumed his office placed the obligation somewhere below him. The verse exists to tell him it did not.
The reflection
Jeremiah's woe falls on the builder, not the building. The farm functioned. Chickens were tended, pallets were stacked, gates were welded, half a million dollars moved. By every operational measure it worked, and that is exactly the situation the prophet addresses. He is not warning against failure. He is warning against success that runs on a withheld wage.
The language of formation makes this harder to see. "Rehabilitation," "mentoring," "vocational training" are real words for real intentions. They are also coverings, and Jeremiah's accusation is that a covering does not change what bears the weight underneath. A purpose that is genuinely good does not convert unpaid labor into something other than unpaid labor. It only makes the unpaid labor easier to defend.
The children did the work for years. The word for what they were owed has not changed since Jehoiakim. It was always wages.