Muller v. Oregon (1908)
This case occurred in the most timely and fortunate era of the progressive movement, which lasted from the late 1890s until World War I. The main goal of the Progressive movement was to ameliorate the worst aspects of rapid industrialization of the United States - the defiling of the environment, the exploitation of citizens, the abuse of workers, and the corruption of the political system. Starting in state legislatures, progressive reformers passed a variety of statutes, including worker's compensation, minimum wages, factory safety laws and maximum hour limits.
However, conservatives were able to block some of these programs in the courts because many members of the judiciary viewed businesses as private property, which the legislatures should not be able to tell people how to use. Courts also sustained the notion of "liberty to contract," which held that employers and employees should be able to negotiate themselves without any state interference.
In the 1905 case of Lochner v. New York, a bare majority of the Supreme Court had ruled that a law limiting bakery workers to a ten-hour day was unconstitutional, because such a measure bore no relation to the workers' health or safety. The Court conceded, however, that such measures might be permissible if it could be shown that the law did in fact serve to protect health or safety.
Thus, when the state of Oregon established a ten-hour workday for women in laundries and factories, business owners, represented by Muller, attacked it on the grounds that, like the New York law, it bore no relation to the women's health or safety. To defend their law, Oregon turned to the renowned Boston attorney Louis D. Brandeis, who had already won a reputation for defending public interests. Brandeis seized upon the opening in Lochner, namely, that if he could show how the Oregon law related to worker health and safety, then the Court would have to sustain it. He devised a highly detailed brief filled with over 100 pages with sociological, economic and physiological data on the effect of long working hours on the health of women. The Supreme Court acknowledged the brief, but conceded that women were in fact different from men, and thus needed this type of factory protection. Brandeis's strategy had worked, and though it seems sexist and discriminatory by today's standards, it was hailed as a triumphant achievement by progressives at the time. The most important result of the Brandeis brief and of the decision in this case is that it set the model for all future reformers attempting to use the law to affect social and political conditions.
The Full Supreme Court Opinion