Can states pass laws limiting work hours and protecting workers?
By the end of the 19th Century, many immigrant laborers were living and working in appalling conditions, piled 10 or 12 to an apartment and forced by their bosses to work round-the-clock shifts. Industrial bakeries were among the offenders, forcing some bakers to sleep on the very tables where they kneaded the dough. In response, the state of New York passed a law limiting bakers’ hours to 60 per week – or 12 hours of every workday – and enforcing other health provisions such as banning live animals from bakery floors. The law was a triumph for the nascent labor movement, but a thorn in the side of owners and managers, who resented any restrictions on their ability to demand the most from their employees.
Joseph Lochner was a bakery owner who had himself been an immigrant laborer from Bavaria. He started his business in the upstate city of Utica, in upstate New York. He especially resented the law because he believed that immigrants like himself should be able to work as many hours as they could to better their lives. Lochner made a deal with an employee, Aman Schmitter, to accept 2 percent of the bakery’s profits as compensation for more hours. This made him look like a co-owner rather than an employee, and Lochner hoped this would allow Schmitter to work longer shifts. However, the Journeyman’s Union of Utica complained and Lochner was indicted in 1899 for knowingly and wrongly allowing an employee to work more than the legal maximum of hours.
His conviction was upheld by an appellate court and then by the New York Court of Appeals before making its way to the Supreme Court.
In a 5-4 decision, the court struck down the limit on baker’s hours, with some justices openly vowing to curb the amount of trouble unions could cause with the backing of sympathetic legislatures. The ruling was an enormous disappointment to the labor movement, but the court’s rationale was even more of a blow. The court declared that the Constitution included an implied “right to contract” and that labor laws that limit workers’ hours violate “the right of contact between the employer and employees. . .” The court had twisted the case on its head: Most workers worked more hours than they wanted or could safely manage because their bosses demanded it, not because they chose to do so.
Harlan wrote a powerful dissent. He declared that judges must defer to the wisdom of state legislatures as long as they had a reasonable basis for their action: “The rule is universal that a legislative enactment, federal or state, is never to be disregarded or held invalid unless it be, beyond question, plainly and palpably in excess of legislative powers.”
He also zeroed in on the real-life implications of the case: “It is plain that this statute was enacted in order to protect the physical well-being of those who work in bakery and confectionary establishments. It may be that the statute had its origin, in part, in the belief that employers and employees in such establishments were not upon an equal footing, and that the necessities of the latter often compelled them to submit to such exactions as unduly taxed their strength.”
The lack of restraint showed by the court, Harlan warned, would hamstring the ability of legislatures to deal with pressing and even dangerous problems. He was right. The court continued to apply the Lochner precedent for 30 years, invalidating attempts by states to set minimum hours and wages for workers across the country. Finally, after President Franklin Roosevelt threatened to pack the court with new justices, the Supreme Court reversed course. Thus ended a crisis that threatened to upend the system of constitutional checks and balances. As for the Lochner case, it went down in infamy. Today, liberals and conservatives alike readily declare it to have been one of the most wrong-headed decisions in judicial history.