Muller v. Oregon
The Court upheld an Oregon law limiting women to ten hours of work a day in laundries and factories, ruling that the law did not violate the constitutional right to make contracts freely.
The decision drew a sharp line between men and women workers, reasoning that physical differences and childbearing justified special legal protections for women even though a similar law limiting men's hours had recently been struck down.
“That woman’s physical structure and the performance of maternal functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence is obvious.”
The Court's core reasoning for treating women differently from men under labor laws.
How it got here: A trial court convicted Muller and Oregon's Supreme Court affirmed; Muller then brought a writ of error to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Curt Muller owned the Grand Laundry in Portland, Oregon. He was charged after an overseer allowed a female employee, Mrs. E. Gotcher, to work more than ten hours in a single day, violating an 1903 Oregon law capping women's work hours in mechanical establishments, factories, and laundries. Muller was convicted and fined $10, and Oregon's Supreme Court upheld the conviction.
The question before the Court
Could Oregon limit women to no more than ten hours of work a day in factories and laundries without violating a business owner's right to contract?
Why it matters
The ruling let states pass hour and workplace-safety laws specifically for women without running afoul of the Constitution, opening the door to decades of protective labor legislation. It also cemented a legal double standard: women's contract rights could be restricted in ways men's could not, based on assumptions about sex and motherhood.
What changes now
This is a final merits decision, so Muller's conviction and fine stand and Oregon's ten-hour law for women remains in force. The ruling did not disturb Lochner v. New York's protection of male workers' contract rights, and it left open how far similar sex-based labor protections could extend, a question later legislatures and courts would continue to address as protective labor laws expanded across the states.
What this does not decide
The Court expressly limited its ruling to laws protecting women, stating it was not questioning Lochner v. New York's protection of men's contract rights. The decision does not address whether states could impose similar hour limits on male workers, or whether other sex-based workplace restrictions would be constitutional.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court began from the premise, established in earlier cases like Allgeyer v. Louisiana and Lochner v. New York, that the right to contract about one's own labor is part of the 'liberty' protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, but that this liberty is not absolute and states may restrict it in some circumstances.
- The Court then asked whether a difference between the sexes could justify a labor restriction for women that would not be constitutional if applied to men, given that Lochner had struck down a similar hour limit for male bakery workers.
- Relying on legislative history from many states and countries, and on general medical and social opinion, the Court concluded that women's physical structure and childbearing role placed them at a disadvantage in the labor market and made long hours more physically harmful to them than to men.
- Because of these differences, the Court reasoned that women could properly be placed in a distinct legal class, allowing legislatures to pass protective hour laws for women even where equivalent legislation for men could not be sustained under the Fourteenth Amendment.
- Applying this reasoning to the Oregon law, the Court found the ten-hour limit for women in laundries and factories to be a permissible use of the state's police power rather than an unconstitutional interference with contract rights.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Lochner v. New York (198 U.S. 45)
The Court said its earlier ruling protecting bakers' contract rights did not apply to women's hour limits.