Muller v. Oregon
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Muller v. Oregon
208 U.S. 412 (1908), argued 15 Jan. 1908, decided 24 Feb. 1908 by vote of 9 to 0; Brewer for the Court. In February 1903, Oregon set a maximum of ten hours of work a day for women employed in factories and laundries. The law differed little from other state statutes passed during the Progressive Era and constituted part of the reform drive to ameliorate the harsher aspects of industrialization. The Supreme Court had upheld a similar Utah law for miners in Holden v. Hardy (1898), but then by a 5‐to‐4 vote had struck down a New York ten‐hour limit for bakery workers as a violation of freedom of contract in Lochner v. New York (1905).
Shortly after that decision, Joe Haselbock, the foreman of Curt Muller's Grand Laundry in Portland, Oregon, required Mrs. Elmer Gotcher to work more than ten hours on 4 September 1905. Two weeks later a local court found Muller guilty of violating the state ten‐hour law and fined him ten dollars. Aware of Lochner, Muller appealed the misdemeanor conviction. The Oregon Supreme Court upheld the statute's constitutionality in 1906, and the following year the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
With the permission of the state's attorney general, the National Consumers' League secured Louis D. Brandeis to defend the law before the Supreme Court. Brandeis decided on a highly innovative strategy yet one firmly grounded in previous decisions of the high court.
In various cases testing protective legislation, the Court had repeatedly upheld the state's police power to guard the health, safety, and welfare of its citizens. The majority opinion by Justice Rufus W. Peckham in Lochner had asserted that no connection existed between the legitimate goals of the police power and the ten‐hour bakery law; in his dissent in that case, Justice John Marshall Harlan had suggested that if a valid reason could be found to justify the regulation of hours, such laws could withstand judicial scrutiny.
Brandeis, with the aid of Florence Kelley and Josephine Goldmark of the Consumers' League, set about amassing the evidence to demonstrate the connection between women's health and long hours worked in factories. The two women gathered every medical and government report remotely connected to this issue, and Brandeis assembled the material in a highly unusual brief.
He covered the legal precedents in only two pages, and instead of trying to overturn Lochner, used its assertion that concerns directly related to health, safety, and welfare could justify a state in abridging freedom of contract through limitation of hours. In the next fifteen pages he included excerpts of other state and foreign statutes to show that Oregon was not alone in its belief that long hours endangered women's health. Part two of the brief consisted of ninety‐five pages of quotations from American and European factory and medical reports, representing the best data available at the time, supporting the assertion that long hours had a detrimental effect on women's health.
In what observers described as a masterful argument before the Court, Brandeis followed the same strategy, assuming that the law would be upheld if the justices recognized the relationship between the statute and the state's legitimate interest in women's health.
The technique worked, and Justice David J. Brewer, speaking for the Court, not only upheld the law, but in an unusual aside, mentioned Brandeis and the “very copious collection” of data he had filed. The Court acknowledged that “woman's physical structure and the performance of maternal functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence.” Long hours of work took a toll on a woman, “and as healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring, the physical well‐being of women becomes an object of public interest and care” (p. 421).
Brewer took care to note that the decision in Muller did not “in any respect” undermine the earlier opinion in Lochner, although many people at the time assumed that the Court had sub silentio overruled Lochner. In the 1920s, however, the conservative majority resurrected Lochner and its doctrine of freedom of contract.
Muller became the paradigm for efforts to make courts aware of social and economic conditions underlying reform legislation. Brandeis created an entry into legal argument for social facts; the “Brandeis brief” would now be the norm for advocates defending reform legislation as well as those attacking particular social conditions, such as racial segregation in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
See also Due Process, Substantive; Gender; State Regulation of Commerce.
Bibliography
- Alpheus T. Mason,
The Case of the Overworked Laundress , in Quarrels that Have Shaped the Constitution, edited by John Garraty (1975), pp. 176–190. - Nancy Woloch, Muller v. Oregon: A Brief History with Documents (1996)
— Melvin I. Urofsky
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Muller v. Oregon
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Muller v. Oregon
• 208 U.S. 412 (1908)
• Vote: 9–0
• For the Court: Brewer
In the early 1900s state legislatures began passing laws aimed at reforming working conditions. Employers soon challenged the new laws. As a result, the Supreme Court began to face questions regarding the constitutionality of these reform laws.
A case arose in 1907 that dramatically changed how the Supreme Court made decisions about such social reform legislation. That year, Curt Muller, a Portland, Oregon, laundry owner, was charged with violating an Oregon law that set a maximum 10-hour workday for women working in laundries. Muller challenged the law as a violation of his “liberty to contract,” which he claimed was guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.
Muller argued that the due process clause of the 14th Amendment prevented the state from interfering with his liberty to enter into any contracts, including those setting wages and hours for workers, necessary for running his business. (The amendment states, in part, “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”) The Supreme Court had supported this interpretation of the 14th Amendment in several earlier cases.
Louis D. Brandeis, a brilliant lawyer who later became a distinguished Supreme Court justice, argued the case for Oregon. Brandeis took a startling new approach. He presented sociological, medical, and statistical information to show that long hours of hard labor had a harmful effect upon women's health. He claimed the Court must consider whether the Oregon law was a reasonable attempt to protect public health and safety. A state law might be allowed to interfere with the 14th Amendment's presumed guarantee of liberty of contract if it could be justified as protecting public health against real dangers.
How could the Court decide when a state law met such a standard? Brandeis argued that the Court could not rely merely on legal precedents and the vague words of the Constitution in judging such cases. It also had to consider relevant facts about the social conditions that led to the law in the first place.
The Issue
Brandeis defined the question before the Court: Did the consideration of social conditions justify the Oregon law's interference with the 14th Amendment supposed guarantee of liberty of contract?
Would the Court accept Brandeis's novel thesis that it should consider relevant social facts in deciding the case? Or would the Court, as it had in the past, decide the case strictly through reference to legal arguments?
Opinion of the Court
The Court accepted Brandeis's argument, ruling unanimously to uphold Oregon's law. The factual evidence Brandeis supplied proved convincing. The Court ruled that longer working hours might harm women's ability to bear children. Thus, the state's limitation of those hours was a justified interference with liberty of contract and property and within the state's regulatory power.
Significance
The Muller case established that lawyers could use social facts and statistics as well as strictly legal arguments in the briefs they presented to the Supreme Court. A brief is a document summarizing the facts and legal arguments that a lawyer gives to a court when appealing a case. Today we call a brief that contains substantial nonlegal data a Brandeis brief. Ever since the Muller case, lawyers have used relevant social data in their arguments before the Court. When deciding subsequent cases—Brown v. Board of Education (1954), for example-the Supreme Court has recognized that information about social conditions could appropriately supplement legal principles.
See also Brandeis brief
Sources
- Alpheus Thomas Mason, “The Case of the Overworked Laundress”, in Quarrels That Have Shaped the Constitution, edited by John A. Garraty (New York: Harper & Row, 1987).
- Nancy Woloch, Muller v. Oregon: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1996)
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Muller v. Oregon
Muller v. Oregon (1908), 208 U.S. 412. In Muller the United States Supreme Court unanimously upheld an Oregon statute limiting the hours that women could labor in factories and laundries to ten a day. In a brief, conclusory opinion, Justice David J. Brewer, normally a foe of laws that interfered with the liberty of employment contracts exalted by Lochner v. New York (1905), found the Oregon limits compatible with Lochner because "this liberty is not absolute." Brewer justified the limits because of "woman's physical structure" and the "maternal functions" she performs in society. "Healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring" and thus to the "strength and vigor of the race."
In paternalistic passages, Brewer emphasized women's "disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence." Because of differences in physical strength and emotional temperament, a woman "is not an equal competitor" in the social-Darwinist struggle. "Woman has always been dependent on man," yet laws must "protect her from the greed as well as the passion of man."
Despite its now discarded presumptions, Muller had a far-reaching influence on subsequent constitutional doctrine. Though its authority was eclipsed for a time by Adkins v. Children's Hospital (1923) and Morehead v. New York ex rel. Tipaldo (1936), the court vindicated its holding after 1937. It was one of the first Supreme Court opinions to acknowledge the relevance of what are now called "constitutional facts." These are questions of fact that are necessary for an appellate court to know to be able to make a ruling on a constitutional issue. Most importantly, it was a turning point in constitutional law because the court for the first time accepted the persuasive authority of the "Brandeis brief," thereby admitting the relevance of the social sciences into constitutional adjudication.
Bibliography
Fiss, Owen M. Troubled Beginnings of the Modern State, 1888– 1910. New York: Macmillan, 1993.
Mason, Alpheus T. "The Case of the Overworked Laundress." In Quarrels that Have Shaped the Constitution. Edited by John A. Garraty. New York: Harper and Row, 1964.
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Muller v. Oregon
| Mueller v. Oregon | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Supreme Court of the United States |
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| Argued January 15, 1908 Decided February 24, 1908 |
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| Full case name | Curt Muller, Plaintiff in Error v. The State of Oregon. Appellant's claim: Oregon's 1903 maximum hours law is unconstitutional. | |||||
| Citations | 208 U.S. 412 (more) 28 S. Ct. 324;52 L. Ed. 551;1908 U.S. LEXIS 1452 |
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| Prior history | Defendant convicted; affirmed, 85 P. 855 (Or. 1906) | |||||
| Subsequent history | None | |||||
| Holding | ||||||
| Oregon's limit on the working hours of women was constitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment, because it was justified by the strong state interest in protecting women's health. Supreme Court of Oregon affirmed. | ||||||
| Court membership | ||||||
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| Case opinions | ||||||
| Majority | Brewer, joined by unanimous | |||||
| Laws applied | ||||||
| U.S. Const. amend. XIV; 1903 Or. Laws p. 148 | ||||||
Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908), was a landmark decision in United States Supreme Court history, as it justifies both sex discrimination and usage of labor laws during the time period. The case upheld Oregon state restrictions on the working hours of women as justified by the special state interest in protecting women's health. The ruling had important implications for protective labor legislation.[1]
Curt Muller, the owner of a laundry business, was convicted of violating Oregon labor laws by making a female employee work more than ten hours in a single day. Muller was fined $10. Muller appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, both of which upheld the constitutionality of the labor law and affirmed his conviction.
The case was decided a mere three years after Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905), in which a New York law restricting the weekly working hours of bakers was invalidated.
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The decision
In Justice David Josiah Brewer's unanimous opinion in Muller, the Court upheld the Oregon regulation. The Court did not overrule Lochner, but instead distinguished it on the basis of "the difference between the sexes." The child-bearing physiology and social role of women provided a strong state interest in reducing their working hours.
- "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." 208 U.S. at 412.
Future Supreme Court justice, Louis Brandeis, as additional counsel for the State of Oregon, filed a voluminous brief in support of the Oregon law that collected empirical data from hundreds of sources. In what became known as the "Brandeis Brief", the report provided social authorities on the issue of the impact of long working hours on women. This was the first instance in the United States that social science had been used in law and changed the direction of the Supreme Court and of U.S. law. The Brandeis Brief became the model for future Supreme Court presentations.
Effects
Though with the state winning in shorter hours for women, and the popular progressives being happy with the outcome, equal-rights feminists were against this because it worked so heavily on the separation of the sexes into two stereotyped gender-roles and restricted women's financial independence.This labor law gave women more protection however it excluded women of color, food processors, agricultural workers, and white collar educated women. The governmental interest in public welfare outweighed the freedom of contract that is displayed in the 14th Amendment and the effects of Muller v. Oregon did not change until the New Deal days in the 1930s. It was also a watershed in the development of maternalist reforms.[2][3][4][5]
The ruling was criticized because it set a precedent to use sex differences, and in particular, women's child-bearing capacity, as a basis for separate legislation, supporting the idea that the family has priority over women's rights as workers.[1]
See also
- Brandeis Brief
- List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 208
- Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905)
- Adkins v. Children's Hospital, 261 U.S. 525 (1923)
- West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379 (1937)
Notes
- ^ a b Baron, Ava (1981). "Protective Labor Legislation and the Cult of Domesticity". Journal of Family Issues (SAGE Publications) 2 (1): 25–38. doi:10.1177/0192513X8100200103.
- ^ Brandeis, L. D. (1907). The Brandeis Brief. Retrieved January 27, 2010, from http://www.law.louisville.edu/library/collections/brandeis/node/235
- ^ Woloch, N. (1996). Muller v. Oregon: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press.
- ^ Barney, S. L. (1999). Maternalism and the Promotion of Scientific Medicine during the Industrial Transformation of Appalachia, 1880-1930. NWSA Journal, 11(3), 68-92.
- ^ Koven, S., & Michel, S. (1993). Mothers of a New World, Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (). Routledge.
Further reading
- Becker, Mary E. (1986). "From Muller v. Oregon to Fetal Vulnerability Policies". University of Chicago Law Review (The University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 53, No. 4) 53 (4): 1219–1273. doi:10.2307/1599748. JSTOR 1599748.
- Bernstein, David E. (2011). Rehabilitating Lochner: Defending Individual Rights against Progressive Reform. Chapter 4. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-04353-3
- Cushman, Clare (2001). Supreme Court Decisions and Women's Rights: Milestone to Equality. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly. pp. 17–18. ISBN 1-56802-614-5.
- Woloch, Nancy (1996). Muller v. Oregon: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-12816-9.
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