Five-minute digest
Lochner v. New York
Summary
In 1895 New York passed the Bakeshop Act, which regulated the sanitation of bakeries and provided that no employee could be required or permitted to work in a bakery more than sixty hours a week or ten hours a day. The hours provision was carried into the state's Labor Law of 1897. Joseph Lochner, who owned a small bakery in Utica, was charged with allowing an employee to work more than sixty hours in one week; it was his second offense, and he was fined fifty dollars. The state's intermediate appellate court and then its Court of Appeals, by four votes to three, upheld the conviction, and Lochner sought review in Washington. The question was whether the hours limit deprived employers and employees of liberty without due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment. Lochner's counsel, Henry Weismann, argued that the right to buy and sell labor was part of the liberty the amendment protects, that baking was an ordinary trade no more dangerous than many others, and that the law served the interests of organized labor rather than public health. New York answered that the legislature had found long hours in hot, dusty, often underground bakeshops injurious to workers, that the state's police power plainly extended to health, and that courts should defer to that judgment. On 17 April 1905 the Court reversed, five to four. Justice Peckham, building on Allgeyer v. Louisiana (1897), held that freedom of contract is protected liberty, subject to reasonable exercises of the police power. The Court must ask whether a law is a fair and appropriate health measure or an arbitrary interference. Bakers, he wrote, were as intelligent and capable as other workmen and not wards of the state; the trade was not unhealthy enough to justify the limit; clean bread did not depend on hours; and the law's real purpose was to regulate labor in a private business. Justice Harlan, joined by Justices White and Day, dissented on the ground that a statute must be upheld unless plainly beyond legislative power, and cited medical writers describing bakers' long night hours in overheated rooms. Justice Holmes, dissenting alone, wrote that the case was decided upon an economic theory much of the country did not hold, that the Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Herbert Spencer's Social Statics, and that the word liberty should not prevent a dominant opinion from becoming law unless fundamental principles would plainly be infringed. The library text gives Peckham's opinion, the opening portion of Harlan's dissent and Holmes's complete dissent, without footnotes. The Court upheld women's hours laws in Muller v. Oregon (1908) and a ten-hour law for factory workers in Bunting v. Oregon (1917). West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937) upheld a minimum-wage law and turned the Court away from Lochner's approach, and the period from about 1897 to 1937 is often called the Lochner era.
Top Lessons
Liberty of contract as a constitutional right
Peckham's opinion treats the freedom of a worker and an employer to agree on terms as part of the liberty the Fourteenth Amendment protects. The idea drew on a long tradition that valued free labor and the right to pursue a calling, and it placed the burden on the state to justify limits.
Who judges the reasons for a law?
All the justices agreed the state could protect health; they disagreed over who decides whether a law really does so. Peckham held that the Court must examine the connection between the means and the end, while Harlan and Holmes would leave the matter to the legislature unless the law was plainly unreasonable.
Evidence and the facts of a trade
The opinions disagree about what baking was actually like. Peckham reviewed mortality statistics and found the trade no worse than many; Harlan quoted writers on occupational disease describing night work in overheated rooms. The case shows how factual judgments shape constitutional conclusions.
A constitution for people of differing views
Holmes argued that a constitution is made for people of fundamentally differing views and should not enact either paternalism or laissez faire. His dissent became a touchstone for judicial restraint, while defenders of Peckham's approach answer that some liberties must be protected even against popular majorities.
Verified Quotes
“It is a question of which of two powers or rights shall prevail—the power of the State to legislate or the right of the individual to liberty of person and freedom of contract.”
“We think that there can be no fair doubt that the trade of a baker, in and of itself, is not an unhealthy one to that degree which would authorize the legislature to interfere with the right to labor, and with the right of free contract on the part of the individual, either as employer or employé.”
Frequently cited
“Statutes of the nature of that under review, limiting the hours in which grown and intelligent men may labor to earn their living, are mere meddlesome interferences with the rights of the individual”
“If there be doubt as to the validity of the statute, that doubt must therefore be resolved in favor of its validity, and the courts must keep their hands off, leaving the legislature to meet the responsibility for unwise legislation.”
Frequently cited
“The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics.”
Frequently cited
“General propositions do not decide concrete cases. The decision will depend on a judgment or intuition more subtle than any articulate major premise.”
Medical Lens
The justices dispute whether long hours in bakeries endangered workers' health: Peckham weighs trade mortality statistics and finds baking no more unhealthy than many occupations, while Harlan's dissent quotes writers on occupational disease about night work in overheated shops, making the case an early example of courts weighing evidence on workplace health.