Muller v. Oregon
Muller v. Oregon is a landmark Supreme Court case decided in 1908 that addressed labor laws specifically concerning women. The case arose when Curt Muller, a laundry owner, was fined for requiring one of his employees to work more than ten hours a day, a restriction enacted by the Oregon legislature influenced by the Progressive movement. Muller contended that the law infringed upon the rights of employers and workers to freely negotiate their working conditions, referencing the precedent set in Lochner v. New York (1905). However, the case took a notable turn when Louis D. Brandeis, representing the state, submitted an extensive brief that included empirical evidence highlighting the adverse health effects of long working hours on women. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld Oregon's law, with Justice David J. Brewer noting the importance of Brandeis' evidence. The ruling acknowledged the state's right to impose restrictions for the health and safety of women, though it also implied that similar laws for men might not be justified. While this case is historically significant, subsequent rulings have shown a more complex relationship between gender-specific labor protections and the rights of individuals to contract freely. Muller v. Oregon is primarily remembered for the innovative Brandeis Brief, which set a precedent for using social science evidence in legal arguments.
Muller v. Oregon
Date: February 24, 1908
Citation: 208 U.S. 412
Issue: Maximum-hour laws
Significance: Although committed to the freedom of contract doctrine, the Supreme Court accepted that the special needs of women justified a law limiting the number of hours worked.
Influenced by the Progressive movement, the Oregon legislature in 1903 established a maximum of ten hours per workday for women working in factories and laundries. Curt Muller, owner of a laundry, was convicted of a misdemeanor and fined ten dollars for requiring an employee to work more than ten hours. Referring to Lochner v. New York (1905), Muller argued that the law violated the liberty of employers and workers to enter into free agreements about the terms of employment. The National Consumers’ League and Louis D. Brandeis assisted the state in defending the law before the Supreme Court. Brandeis prepared an extraordinary brief, known as the Brandeis Brief, which contained two pages of legal argument and more than a hundred pages of empirical evidence demonstrating that long hours of hard labor endangered the health of women. Based on the precedent of Holden v. Hardy (1898), Brandeis expected that the Court would uphold the law if persuaded that it was justified in terms of the special health requirements of women.
The Court unanimously upheld Oregon’s law. Writing for the Court, Justice David J. Brewer indicated that the justices had been influenced by “the very copious” information that Brandeis had presented in his brief. Because of the “physical structure” and “maternal functions” of women, Brewer concluded that the state could legitimately exercise its police powers to restrict their hours of labor. Trying to harmonize this decision with Lochner, he explained that Oregon’s law, if applied to men, would be an “unreasonable, unnecessary, and arbitrary interference with the right and liberty of the individual to contract in relation to his labor.”
In subsequent cases, the Court did not always approve of laws providing for the special protection of women. In Adkins v. Children’s Hospital (1923), for example, it struck down a minimum-wage law for women. In the so-called constitutional revolution of 1937, the Court abandoned its freedom of contract interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Most of the analysis in Muller, therefore, is of historical interest only, although there are other areas in which the Court has approved of laws recognizing gender distinctions. Muller remains famous primarily because of the success of the Brandeis Brief, which continues to be a model for informing courts of the social and economic needs for reform legislation.