Does a New York labor law limiting bakery employees to ten hours of work per day and sixty hours per week violate the Fourteenth Amendment's protection of liberty of contract as an unreasonable exercise of the state's police power?

Joseph Lochner owned a bakery in Utica, New York. He was indicted under section 110 of the New York labor law of 1897, which provided that no employee could be required or permitted to work in a biscuit, bread, or cake bakery or confectionery establishment more than sixty hours in any one week or more than ten hours in any one day. The indictment charged that Lochner wrongfully and unlawfully required and permitted an employee to work more than sixty hours in one week. The statute contained no emergency exception, and the term "required" was understood to mean nothing more than an arrangement arising from voluntary contract for such labor. Lochner was convicted of a misdemeanor for violating the statute, and the conviction was sustained through the New York appellate courts. He challenged the law as an interference with the freedom of employer and employee to contract regarding hours of labor, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. New York defended the law as a valid exercise of its police power to protect the health of bakery workers.

Lochner was indicted in Oneida County, New York, for violating section 110 of the state labor law and was convicted in the County Court of Oneida County. The conviction was affirmed by the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, with two of five judges dissenting. The New York Court of Appeals then affirmed, with three of seven judges dissenting, upholding the act as a health law. Lochner brought a writ of error to the United States Supreme Court, which heard argument on February 23 and 24, 1905.

(Peckham, J.)

Yes. The New York statute is an unreasonable, unnecessary, and arbitrary interference with the liberty of contract protected by the Fourteenth Amendment and is invalid.

The right to purchase and sell labor is part of the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Allgeyer v. Louisiana, 165 U.S. 578 (1897). That liberty is subject to the state's police power, which extends to the safety, health, morals, and general welfare of the public, but the police power has limits. Otherwise the Fourteenth Amendment would have no efficacy and the claim of police power would become a mere pretext. The question is whether the act is a fair, reasonable, and appropriate exercise of the police power or an arbitrary interference with the right to contract.

As a pure labor law, the statute involves neither the safety, morals, nor welfare of the public. Bakers are not wards of the State and are equal in intelligence and capacity to workers in other trades. Nor is the law a valid health law. Clean and wholesome bread does not depend on whether a baker works ten hours a day or sixty hours a week, and the connection between hours worked and the healthfulness of the bread is too shadowy and thin to justify legislative interference. The trade of baker is not unhealthy to a degree that authorizes interference with free contract. If the mere possibility of some unhealthiness sufficed, every occupation, including those of lawyers, clerks, and bankers, could be regulated, and no trade could escape legislative control.

Holden v. Hardy, 169 U.S. 366 (1898), which upheld an eight-hour limit for miners and smelters, is distinguishable. That case involved dangerous employments, and the Utah statute contained an emergency clause. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905), concerned compulsory vaccination to protect public health. The New York statute also has no emergency exception, and other provisions of the labor law already adequately regulate bakery sanitation. The real object appeared to be regulating hours between master and employee in a private business, which cannot be done consistently with the Federal Constitution. The judgments are reversed and the case remanded.

Dissent (Harlan, J.) The police power extends to protecting the health and safety of citizens, and liberty of contract is subject to reasonable regulation for the common good. A statute may be invalidated only if it is plainly and palpably beyond legislative power, and doubts must be resolved in favor of validity. The statute has a real and substantial relation to the health of bakery workers, who work in air filled with flour dust and endure long hours, night work, and heat, as shown by authorities on occupational disease. Whether the law is wise is not for the Court to decide. Reasonable people may differ on the question, and the courts must leave the states alone in managing their domestic affairs unless the Constitution is clearly violated. Invalidating the statute enlarges the Fourteenth Amendment beyond its purpose and cripples the states' power to protect their citizens' health.

Dissent (Holmes, J.) The decision rests on an economic theory that much of the country does not share, and the Constitution does not enact a particular economic theory, whether paternalism or laissez faire. The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics. Many laws already interfere with liberty of contract, such as Sunday laws, usury laws, lottery prohibitions, and the vaccination law upheld in Jacobson v. Massachusetts. A majority has the right to embody its opinions in law. The word liberty is perverted when it is used to prevent the natural outcome of a dominant opinion, unless a rational and fair person would necessarily admit that the statute infringes fundamental principles as understood by the traditions of our people and our law. A reasonable person could consider the statute a proper health measure or a first installment of a general regulation of working hours.