Subsequent history None | End date 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 Prior history Defendant convicted; affirmed, 85 P. 855 (Or. 1906) Majority Brewer, joined by unanimous Ruling court Supreme Court of the United States Similar Lochner v New York, Adkins v Children's Hospital, West Coast Hotel Co v Parrish, Reed v Reed, Munn v Illinois | ||
Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908), was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court. It was used to justify both sex discrimination and usage of labor laws. 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. The case was decided just 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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Muller v oregon
Background
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.
Judgment
In Justice David Josiah Brewer's unanimous opinion, 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.
"When the constitutionality of the Oregon ten-hour law for women was challenged, Florence Kelley committed The National Consumers League to it's [sic] defense.As Kathryn Kish Sklar has explained, NCL's research director, Josephine Goldmark, prepared a pathbreaking brief, of which only 2 pages consisted of traditional abstract legal reasoning, and over 100 pages offered sociological evidence. Her brother-in-law, the future Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, argued the case in the U.S. Supreme Court. Goldmark and Brandeis's innovation would come to be known as a "Brandeis Brief," and many others would later be modeled on it."
Goldmark and her team were able to assemble 98 out of the 118 pages of the brief, meaning much of the credit for the brief goes to her.
Significance of the case
Groups like the National Consumer League (which included Florence Kelley and Josephine Goldmark as feminists) and the state won shorter hours for women. However, many equal-rights feminists opposed the ruling, since it allowed laws based on stereotyped gender roles that restricted women's rights and financial independence. While it provided protection from long hours to white women, it did not extend to women of color, food processors, agricultural workers, and women who worked in white-collar jobs. The government 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.
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.
"Until the late 1930s, when the Fair Labor Standards Act created gender-neutral workplace protections, the Equal Rights Amendment championed by the NWP would have demolished the gains for women workers won in Muller. This dispute between feminists who valued protection and feminists who valued equality continued until the latter group gained the upper hand in the 1970s."