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The Lochner era, named for the landmark US Supreme Court case Lochner v. New York, 198 US 45 (1905) is a period in American history that roughly corresponds to the second industrial revolution and the Great Depression (1897-1937), and is marked by Court decisions that favored corporations over labor.

Most of the cases (including Lochner) dealt with regulation of work hours and minimum wage legislation, both of which were ruled unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause, as interfering the worker's liberty right to contract independently with the employer. The Court also considered government labor regulations "unreasonable, unnecessary and arbitrary interference with the right and liberty of the individual to contract," and that minimum wage laws, "artificially [restrict] the employer's side of the negotiation."

The Lochner era came to a close when the Court finally upheld the constitutionality of a Washington state minimum wage law in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, 300 US 379 (1939).

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15y ago

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