Danny Doherty wanted to spend his summer vacation productively. For the past few summers, the now-twelve-year-old boy from the Boston suburb of Norwood, Massachusetts, had been asking to have a summer job to earn his own money. Youth employment regulations can make it difficult for young people to gain work experience even if they want to, so Danny turned to entrepreneurship.

"He was bored a few weeks ago and told me that he wanted to have some kind of stand but a lemonade stand seemed too ordinary," his mother Nancy told me. She frequently makes homemade ice cream and suggested that he sell some scoops to neighbors in a small ice cream stand.

"That idea really resonated with him," said Doherty, explaining that Danny came up with a name and logo for his enterprise, and put together an Instagram page with her help. "He's pretty good at marketing!" she added. Danny planned to donate at least half of the money he earned through his stand to a local special-needs hockey team, the Boston Bear Cubs, on which his brother plays.

A few days later, the Norwood Health Department shut down the boy's stand for violating Massachusetts code. A complaint filed with the department led to a cease and desist order.

The shuttering of childhood lemonade stands and similar youth entrepreneurial pursuits is nothing new, but in recent years several states have passed laws to protect such enterprises. In 2017, the Utah legislature passed a bill, known informally as the "lemonade stand law," to allow young people under age 18 to operate occasional, temporary businesses without needing a business license or permit. With the continued support of the Libertas Institute, Utah's free-market think tank, that law was extended earlier this year to include 19-year-olds' small businesses as well.