The Supreme Court and Worker’s Rights During the Progressive Movement
Lochner v. New York – Case Brief Summary (1905).
MULLER v. OREGON (1908)
Facts The Bakeshop Act was a New York state labor law which prohibited bakery
employees from working for more than sixty hours per week or ten hours per
day. Lochner permitted an employee to work in his bakery for more than sixty
hours in one week and was convicted of his second offense and fined.
Lochner appealed his conviction on the grounds that the law violated his
freedom to contract under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment.
Issue - Under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, can
a state limit the work hours of laborers, thereby limiting the “freedom to
contract” between employees and employers?
Facts of the Case
Oregon enacted a law that limited women to ten hours per day and 60 hours
per week of work in factories and laundries . Muller, a laundry shop owner
was convicted for violating the law.
Question
Does the Oregon law violate a woman's freedom of contract implicit in the
liberty protected by due process of the Fourteenth Amendment?
Conclusion
There was no constitutional violation. The factory and laundry owners
claimed that there was no reasonable connection between the law and public
Decision - A law that affects freedom of contract is unconstitutional if it is not
reasonably related to a legitimate purpose of protecting public health. Before
an act can be held to be valid which interferes with the general right of an
individual to contract in relation to his own labor, the act must have a direct
relation to the health and welfare of the employee, as a means to an end,
and the end itself must be appropriate and legitimate.
The general right to make a contract in relation to one’s business is an
individual liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The states’ police
powers however empower them to prevent individuals from making certain
kinds of contracts. The Fourteenth Amendment does not prohibit a state from
prohibiting a contract if the state has the right to do so through the legitimate
exercise of its police power.
The court held that in this case there was no reasonable ground for
interfering with the right of free contract by determining a baker’s hours of
labor. Under such circumstances, the freedom of master and employee to
contract with each other in relation to their employment cannot be prohibited
or interfered with without violating the Constitution
health, safety, or welfare. In a famous brief in defense of the Oregon law,
attorney Louis Brandeis elaborately detailed expert reports on the harmful
physical, economic and social effects of long working hours on women.
Brewer's opinion was based on the proposition that physical and social
differences between the sexes warranted a different rule respecting labor
contracts. Theretofore, gender was not a basis for such distinctions. Brewer's
opinion conveyed the accepted wisdom of the day: that women were unequal
and inferior to men
Questions –
1. In what ways are the facts of the case similar? In what ways are
the facts of the two cases different?
2. How are the court’s decisions different? Why are they different?
3. Do you think the court should have ruled the same?
4. Do you think the government should have the authority to limit
the number of hours that workers work? Explain.
HAMMER V. DAGENHART (1918)
THE CASE
THE ISSUE
As industry expanded and immigrants poured into the country during the
first decades of the 20th century, the number of children in the industrial
workforce swelled. Children took jobs as miners, messengers, mill
workers, and factory employees, and were often forced to work long hours
under unsafe conditions for meager pay. By 1910, a majority of states had
implemented laws regulating child labor and setting age minimums in the
workplace, but concern over child labor persisted.
In Hammer v. Dagenhart, the Supreme Court was charged with assessing
both the Commerce Clause and the Tenth Amendment with respect to the
relative powers of federal and state governments. Hammer v. Dagenhart
put this question before the Court: Does the authority vested in Congress
to regulate commerce among the states allow it to enact legislation
targeting manufacturing practices?
THE DECISION
The Court decided for Dagenhart and overturned the Keating-Owen Act.
Writing for a narrow 5-4 majority, Justice William Day held that the act
was both an unconstitutional application of the Commerce Clause and a
violation of states' rights as protected by the Tenth Amendment. Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes and three other justices dissented vigorously.
Viewing the issue as a matter of both morality and public welfare,
Congress made several unsuccessful attempts to eradicate what it
considered to be abusive child labor practices. Finally, in 1916, Congress
passed the Keating-Owen Child Labor Law Act. Because the federal
government had no power to regulate working conditions within the states,
it used its authority under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to
indirectly influence child labor practices. The Keating-Owen Act prohibited
manufacturers who relied on unreasonable child labor from transporting
their products between states.
When the textile mill where Roland Dagenhart and his sons were employed
refused to allow Dagenhart's 14-year-old son Reuben to work, Dagenhart
turned to the courts. Contending that the Commerce Clause did not give
Congress the authority to regulate manufacturers, and that the Tenth
Amendment prevented the federal government from intervening in labor
issues, Dagenhart and his attorneys argued that the Keating-Owen Act
was unconstitutional.
In the short-term, the Court's decision in Hammer v. Dagenhart
invalidated the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act -- and also gave the Court a
reputation for indulging in judicial activism. In the long term, however, the
legal reasoning of Hammer v. Dagenhart did not hold up. Twenty-three
years later, the Court would overturn Dagenhart in the 1941 landmark
case United States v. Darby Lumber Co. In a decision that relied heavily
on Holmes's reasoning, a unanimous Court upheld in Darby the Fair Labor
Standards Act of 1938, which prohibited full-time employment of most
children under 16 and enacted a national minimum wage. Adopting
Holmes' position, the decision in Darby held that the Tenth Amendment
"states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered."
Although most scholars suggest that improvements in economic and social
conditions were ultimately responsible for the decline in child labor,
congressional legislation in this area, legitimated by the Court,
represented a symbolic commitment to the rights of the nation's workers
and youth.
Questions:
1. What specifically did the Keating Owen Act prohibit? What
constitutional power did Congress use in passing the law?
2. What was the court’s decision? Why?
3. Why did the court issue a different decision regarding a similar law
23 years later?