Lochner v. New York
The Supreme Court struck down a New York law capping bakery workers' hours at ten a day and sixty a week, ruling that it violated the freedom to make contracts protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Court found the law was not a genuine health measure but an improper attempt to regulate ordinary labor terms, setting a precedent that would shape decades of battles over economic regulation before the Court eventually abandoned this approach.
“The general right to make a contract in relation to his business is part of the liberty of the individual protected by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution.”
The majority's foundational premise that contract rights are protected liberty under the Constitution.
How it got here: A New York county court convicted the bakery owner; state appellate courts affirmed; he brought the case to the U.S. Supreme Court by writ of error.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A bakery owner in Utica, New York, was convicted and fined for letting an employee work more than sixty hours in a week, violating a state labor law meant to protect bakery workers' health. He argued the law improperly interfered with his and his employees' right to agree on working hours.
The question before the Court
Could New York limit bakery workers to ten hours a day and sixty hours a week without violating the freedom to make labor contracts?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that New York's bakery-hours law went too far. The right to make contracts about one's own labor is part of the "liberty" protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, and states can only limit that right through their police power when a law has a real, direct connection to public health, safety, or morals.
The Court found baking was not dangerous enough to justify blocking healthy, competent adults from agreeing to work more than ten hours a day. Because the connection between the hour limit and bakers' health was too thin, the law was, in the Court's view, an ordinary labor regulation dressed up as a health law, and it could not stand.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Bakery owners and workers in New York could keep negotiating hours beyond the statute's limits, and the ruling signaled that courts would closely scrutinize labor laws claiming to protect health. This approach discouraged state and federal efforts to regulate wages and working conditions for the next three decades.
What changes now
The case was sent back to the Oneida County Court for further proceedings consistent with the ruling, meaning the bakery owner's conviction could not stand under the invalidated statute. This decision became a foundational precedent for years of Supreme Court skepticism toward economic and labor regulation, an era later referred to as the "Lochner era," which persisted until the Court shifted its approach in the late 1930s.
What this does not decide
The Court did not hold that states can never regulate labor hours for health reasons — it distinguished Holden v. Hardy, which upheld hour limits for miners because that work was especially hazardous. The ruling was limited to finding baking not dangerous enough to justify New York's particular hour restriction.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Harlan
Justice Harlan, joined by White and Day, argued the Court should defer to the legislature unless a law is plainly and palpably unconstitutional. He cited extensive evidence that baking was unhealthy work and concluded there was a real, substantial relation between the hour limits and workers' health, so the statute should have been upheld as a legitimate exercise of the police power.
Dissent — Justice Holmes
“The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics.”Holmes's famous rebuke that the Constitution does not embed any single economic philosophy.
Justice Holmes argued the majority improperly imposed its own economic theory (laissez-faire) rather than applying the Constitution neutrally. He contended the Fourteenth Amendment does not enshrine any particular economic philosophy, and that a law should be upheld unless a rational, fair person would necessarily conclude it violates fundamental principles — a standard this law easily met.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court framed the core conflict as a clash between two things: the individual's liberty to contract over his own labor, protected by the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee that no state may deprive a person of liberty without due process of law, and the state's police power — its authority to regulate for public health, safety, morals, and welfare.
- The Court acknowledged that police power can justify limiting contract rights, citing prior cases like Holden v. Hardy, where an eight-hour limit for miners was upheld because that work was unusually dangerous, and Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which upheld compulsory vaccination as protecting public health.
- The Court then asked whether the bakery hours law had a real and direct relation to protecting health, rather than merely a remote or pretextual connection — reasoning that if any minor health rationale could justify limiting hours in any trade, the police power would swallow the constitutional right to contract entirely.
- Applying that test, the Court concluded baking was not shown to be unhealthy enough, compared to countless ordinary trades, to justify singling it out for hour restrictions, since nearly every occupation carries some health risk.
- Because the statute's connection to bakers' health was, in the Court's words, too 'shadowy and thin,' the Court treated it as an ordinary labor regulation rather than a genuine health law, meaning it could not be justified as an exercise of the police power.
- Having found no legitimate police-power basis, the Court held the law was an unconstitutional interference with the liberty of contract guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Holden v. Hardy (169 U.S. 366)
The Court said mining hour limits upheld there don't apply because baking is not similarly dangerous work.
Distinguishes Jacobson v. Massachusetts (197 U.S. 11)
The Court said compulsory vaccination upheld there involved public health dangers unlike ordinary bakery work.