Muller v. Oregon

208 U.S. 412

Case Year: 1908

Case Ruling: 9-0, Affirmed

Opinion Justice: Brewer

FACTS

At the forefront of the Progressive Movement was an organization called the National Consumers' League (NCL). Through the efforts of the NCL and others, the drive for maximum hour legislation had succeeded in many states, which, by the early 1900s, had imposed some type of restriction. After the Supreme Court's decision in Lochner v. New York (1905), however, all of their efforts were threatened by employers who sought to use that ruling to challenge state regulations.

This case began when the state of Oregon brought charges against Curt Muller for working his female laundry workers longer than the state maximum of ten hours per day. After his conviction, Muller decided to challenge the law. In the view of his attorneys, Oregon's regulation, which prohibited women, but not men, from working in laundries more than ten hours violated his right to enter into a contract with his employees.

Recognizing that in light of Lochner, Muller's argument rested on strong grounds, the NCL grew concerned. It was reluctant to see its hard work to attain passage of the Oregon law nullified by the Supreme Court. To defend the law, the NCL contacted Louis Brandeis, a well-known attorney of the day and a future U.S. Supreme Court justice. Because his philosophical position was very much akin to the NCL's, he agreed to help the organization with the Muller case, but only if it could convince Oregon's attorneys to give him complete control over its course.

When NCL leaders managed to accomplish this, Brandeis got down to work. Because of the decision in Lochner and the stability of the Court's membership, he decided that bold action was necessary. Instead of filling his brief with legal arguments, he would provide the Court with "facts, published by anyone with expert knowledge of industry in its relation to women's hours of labor," which indicated the evils of Muller's actions. In particular, the brief pointed out that forcing women to work long hours affected their health and their reproductive systems. It was full of statements such as the following:

Report of the Massachusetts State Board of Health, 1873.

All additions to the physical, moral, or intellectual power of individuals--in any individual are, to that extent, additions to the energy and the productive force--the effectiveness of the State; and on the contrary, all deductions from these forces, whether of mind or body--every sickness, and injury or disability, every, impairment of energy--take so much from the mental force, the safe administration of the body politic.

The State thus has an interest not only in the prosperity, but also in the health and strength and effective power of each one of its members.

The first and largest interest of the State lies in the great agency of human power--the health of the people.

 

Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1871.

It is claimed that legislation on this subject is an interference between labor and capital. But legislation has interfered with capital and labor both, in the demand for public safety and the public good. Now public safety and public good, the wealth of the commonwealth, centered, as such wealth is, in the well-being of its common people, demands that the State should interfere by special act in favor of working-women, and working children, by enacting a ten-hour law, to be enforced by a system of efficient inspection.

 

International Conference in Relation to Labor Legislation. Berlin, 1890.

It is the idea of the German Emperor that the industrial question demands the attention of all the civilized nations.

The quest of a solution becomes not only a humanitarian duty, but it is exacted also by governmental wisdom, which should at once look out for the well-being of all its citizens and the preservation of the inestimable benefits of civilization.

 

In the end, with the help of the NCL, Brandeis produced an incredible document. Known in legal history as the Brandeis Brief, it contained 113 pages of sociological data culled from various secondary sources and only 2 pages of legal argument.

 

MR. JUSTICE BREWER DELIVERED THE OPINION OF THE COURT.

 

We held in Lochner v. New York that a law providing that no laborer shall be required or permitted to work in bakeries more than sixty hours in a week or ten hours in a day was not, as to men, a legitimate exercise of the police power of the state, but an unreasonable, unnecessary and arbitrary interference with the right and liberty of the individual to contract in relation to his labor, and as such was in conflict with, and void under, the Federal Constitution. That decision is invoked by plaintiff in error as decisive of the question before us. But this assumes that the difference between the sexes does not justify a different rule respecting a restriction of the hours of labor.

In patent cases counsel are apt to open the argument with a discussion of the state of the art. It may not be amiss, in the present case, before examining the constitutional question, to notice the course of legislation, as well as expressions of opinion from other than judicial sources. In the brief filed by Mr. Louis D. Brandeis for the defendant in error is a very copious collection of all these matters, an epitome of which is found in the margin.

The legislation and opinions referred to in the margin may not be, technically speaking, authorities, and in them is little or no discussion of the constitutional question presented to us for determination, yet they are significant of a widespread belief that woman's physical structure, and the functions she performs in consequence thereof, justify special legislation restricting or qualifying the conditions under which she should be permitted to toil. Constitutional questions, it is true, are not settled by even a consensus of present public opinion, for it is the peculiar value of a written constitution that it places in unchanging form limitations upon legislative action, and thus gives a permanence and stability to popular government which otherwise would be lacking. At the same time, when a question of fact is debated and debatable, and the extent to which a special constitutional limitation goes is affected by the truth in respect to that fact, a widespread and long-continued belief concerning it is worthy of consideration. We take judicial cognizance of all matters of general knowledge.

It is undoubtedly true, as more than once declared by this court, that the general right to contract in relation to one's business is part of the liberty of the individual, protected by the 14th Amendment to the Federal Constitution; yet it is equally well settled that this liberty is not absolute and extending to all contracts, and that a state may, without conflicting with the provisions of the 14th Amendment, restrict in many respects the individual's power of contract. Without stopping to discuss at length the extent to which a state may act in this respect, we refer to the following cases in which the question has been considered: Allgeyer v. Louisiana [1897]; Holden v. Hardy [1898]; Lochner v. New York [1905].

That woman's physical structure and the performance of maternal functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence is obvious. This is especially true when the burdens of motherhood are upon her. Even when they are not, by abundant testimony of the medical fraternity continuance for a long time on her feet at work, repeating this from day to day, tends to injurious effects upon the body, and, as healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring, the physical well-being of woman becomes an object of public interest and care in order to preserve the strength and vigor of the race.

Still again, history discloses the fact that woman has always been dependent upon man. He established his control at the outset by superior physical strength, and this control in various forms, with diminishing intensity, has continued to the present. As minors, though not to the same extent, she has been looked upon in the courts as needing especial care that her rights may be preserved. Education was long denied her, and while now the doors of the schoolroom are opened and her opportunities for acquiring knowledge are great, yet even with that and the consequent increase of capacity for business affairs it is still true that in the struggle for subsistence she is not an equal competitor with her brother. Though limitations upon personal and contractual rights may be removed by legislation, there is that in her disposition and habits of life which will operate against a full assertion of those rights. She will still be where some legislation to protect her seems necessary to secure a real equality of right. Doubtless there are individual exceptions, and there are many respects in which she has an advantage over him; but looking at it from the viewpoint of the effort to maintain an independent position in life, she is not upon an equality. Differentiated by these matters from the other sex, she is properly placed in a class by herself, and legislation designed for her protection may be sustained, even when like legislation is not necessary for men, and could not be sustained. It is impossible to close one's eyes to the fact that she still looks to her brother and depends upon him. Even though all restrictions on political, personal, and contractual rights were taken away, and she stood, so far as statutes are concerned, upon an absolutely equal plane with him, it would still be true that she is so constituted that she will rest upon and look to him for protection; that her physical structure and a proper discharge of her maternal functions--having in view not merely her own health, but the well-being of the race--justify legislation to protect her from the greed as well as the passion of man. The limitations which this statute places upon her contractual powers, upon her right to agree with her employer as to the time she shall labor, are not imposed solely for her benefit, but also largely for the benefit of all. Many words cannot make this plainer. The two sexes differ in structure of body, in the functions to be performed by each, in the amount of physical strength, in the capacity for long-continued labor, particularly when done standing, the influence of vigorous health upon the future well-being of the race, the self-reliance which enables one to assert full rights, and in the capacity to maintain the struggle for subsistence. This difference justifies a difference in legislation, and upholds that which is designed to compensate for some of the burdens which rest upon her.

We have not referred in this discussion to the denial of the elective franchise in the state of Oregon, for while that may disclose a lack of political equality in all things with her brother, that is not of itself decisive. The reason runs deeper, and rests in the inherent difference between the two sexes, and in the different functions in life which they perform.

For these reasons, and without questioning in any respect the decision in Lochner v. New York, we are of the opinion that it cannot be adjudged that the act in question is in conflict with the Federal Constitution, so far as it respects the work of a female in a laundry, and the judgment of the Supreme Court of Oregon is affirmed.