Supreme Court of Oregon affirmed. U.S. Const. amend. XIV; 1903 Or. Laws p. 148 Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908), was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court.
A local judge fined Muller, who appealed the decision, putting the case on the path that would lead to the U.S. Supreme Court. Muller’s attorney for the appeal was William Fenton, an opponent of state intervention in the economy.
According to Muller, the state had inherited police power to interfere with property and labor contract, in order to protect health and safety of its citizens. On September 18, 1905 a complaint was filed at the State of Oregon Circuit Court against Curt Muller, owner of Grand Laundry.
He was charged with violating the law by allowing a woman at his laundry forced to work more than 10 hours in a given work day. After being convicted and charged with a $10 fine, Curt Muller appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court. Muller claimed that the charges violated his right to freely contract under the US Constitution.
Curt MullerCurt Muller, the owner of a laundry business, was convicted of violating Oregon labor laws by making a female employee work more than ten hours in a single day. Muller was fined $10.
In this case, Curt Muller owned a laundry business. On September 4, 1905, he required a female employee to work more than ten hours in a single day. This conflicted with an Oregon law that allowed for a maximum of ten hour workdays for women who worked in mechanical establishments, factories, and laundries.
After Muller, many states passed wages and hours laws and other statutes regulating the conditions of work. However, in 1923, the Supreme Court ruled this legislation was unconstitutional in Adkins v. Children's Hospital. Then the Great Depression of the 1930s forced the Court to reverse its decision.
In 1907, Florence Kelley and Josephine Goldmark hired Louis D. Brandeis to represent the state of Oregon in Muller v. Oregon (208 US 412), a case before the US Supreme Court that involved the constitutionality of limiting hours for female laundry workers.
Justice David BrewerJustice David Brewer wrote the majority opinion. In his that no women could not work more than 10 hours a day in factories and laundry.
Terms in this set (4) A supreme court case decided in 1908 that pertained to the working hours of women. The court ruled in favor of Oregon, that these restrictions were legal under the state laws to protect women's health.
President Benjamin Harrison(1837-1910): Brewer, an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1889-1910), was appointed to the High Court bench by President Benjamin Harrison. He delivered the unanimous opinion in the Muller v. State of Oregon case.
Do you agree with the Supreme Court's decision in Muller? Give reasons for your answer? Yes, Muller broke the law that was in place. Why was the Espionage Act passed?
Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908), was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court. Women were provided by state mandate lesser work-hours than allotted to men. The posed question was whether women's liberty to negotiate a contract with an employer should be equal to a man's.
Muller was fined $10. Muller appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, both of which upheld the constitutionality of the labor law and affirmed his conviction.
Holding. Oregon's limit on the working hours of women was constitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment , as it was justified by the strong state interest in protecting women's health. Supreme Court of Oregon affirmed. Court membership. Chief Justice.
Her brother-in-law, the future Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, argued the case in the U.S. Supreme Court. Goldmark and Brandeis's innovation would come to be known as a " Brandeis Brief ," and many others would later be modeled on it.".
The State of Oregon. Appellant's claim: Oregon's 1903 maximum hours law is unconstitutional. Oregon's limit on the working hours of women was constitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment, as it was justified by the strong state interest in protecting women's health. Supreme Court of Oregon affirmed.
The decision in Muller v. Oregon resulted in other state laws related to wages, work hours, and work conditions.
Oregon (1908) Primary tabs. Muller v. Oregon (1908) is a U.S. Supreme Court case in which the Court considered whether a state could limit the amount of hours a woman could work while not also limiting the hours of men. In this case, Curt Muller owned a laundry business.
Muller appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court, who affirmed the decision. On writ of error, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case and considered whether the Oregon law violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
On September 4, 1905, he required a female employee to work more than ten hours in a single day. This conflicted with an Oregon law that allowed for a maximum of ten hour workdays for women who worked in mechanical establishments, factories, and laundries.
Muller v. Oregon, one of the most important U.S. Supreme Court cases of the Progressive Era , upheld an Oregon law limiting the workday for female wage earners to ten hours. The case established a precedent in 1908 to expand the reach of state activity into the realm of protective labor legislation.
Supreme Court. Muller’s attorney for the appeal was William Fenton, an opponent of state intervention in the economy.
Most notably, in the Lochner decision of 1905, the Court had ruled unconstitutional a New York law that had limited the hours of employment bakeries could impose on their workers, all of whom were male, on the grounds that it was an unhealthful profession.
Kelley sought out attorney Louis Brandeis to write the defense brief in the Muller case. His use of social scientific research to argue that women were adversely affected by long hours of labor was an attempt to get around the Lochner decision.
While the argument aimed to prevent the state from gaining any right to regulate economic activity, it also expressed the sentiment of many feminists of the era, including Clara Colby , the editor of the Portland -based Woman’s Tribune: “The state has no right to lay any disability upon woman as an individual.”.
The Court upheld the lower court’s decision because women are uniquely qualified to fulfill these roles, and it was established that the natural order of society was for women to depend on men to work the long hours. Muller v. Oregon Case Brief.
Oregon, Supreme Court of the United States, (1908) Case summary for Muller v. Oregon: An Oregon state law restricted a women’s working hours to ten per day. After being convicted of requiring a woman to violate the statute, Muller, a laundry business owner, challenged the constitutionality of the statute. The state courts continued to find ...
Statement of the facts: Oregon’s legislature passed a law which limited the working hours of female employees. Under the law passed in 1903, a woman could not work more than ten hours a day. Mr. Curt Muller was convicted of violating the statute when he required a woman to work over the limit at his laundry facility.
During the late 1800s and early 1900s, life in America shifted from a largely rural style of living where most Americans lived and worked on farms or ranches to an increasingly urban lifestyle where most Americans lived and worked in industrial cities.
Brandeis wrote a unique legal brief, which later became known as the Brandeis brief, in which there were only two pages of legal arguments followed by over one hundred pages of statistics and expert opinions from social scientists who argued that women were psychically, mentally, and emotionally unable to work for more than ten hours at a time.
Today, the decision in Muller v. Oregon is viewed with mixed results. The notion that workers must be protected from their employers by limiting the number of hours they can be mandated to work is often seen as a positive aspect of this case.
In 1903, Oregon passed a statute limiting the hours a woman can work to just 10 hours if she was employed in a laundry, factory or mechanical manufacturer. The reasoning for the law was, “the physical organization of women, her maternal functions, the rearing and education of children and the maintenance of the home.”. Issue.
The Supreme Court of the United States (Supreme Court) defines women as a class needing protection based on the traditional concepts of a woman’s role in society. The discussion focuses heavily on the physical weakness of women and their inherent reliance on men for support.
Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908), was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court. Women were provided by state mandate lesser work-hours than allotted to men. The posed question was whether women's liberty to negotiate a contract with an employer should be equal to a man's. The law did not recognize sex-based discrimination in 1908; it was unrecognized until the case of Reed v. Reed in 1971; here, the test was not under the equal protections clause, but a test based on the general police powers of the state to protect the welfare of wo…
Curt Muller, the owner of a laundry business, was convicted of violating Oregon labor laws by making a female employee work more than ten hours in a single day. Muller was fined $10. Muller appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, both of which upheld the constitutionality of the labor law and affirmed his conviction.
Louis Brandeis, the young attorney who used social science to argue that women workers needed special protec…
In Justice David Josiah Brewer's unanimous opinion, the Court upheld the Oregon regulation. The Court did not overrule Lochner, but instead distinguished it on the basis of "the difference between the sexes". The child-bearing physiology and social role of women provided a strong state interest in reducing their working hours.
That woman's physical structure and the performance of maternal functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence is obvious. This is especially true when the burdens of motherhood are upon her. Even …
Groups like the National Consumer League (which included Florence Kelley and Josephine Goldmark as feminists) and the state won shorter hours for women. However, many equal-rights feminists opposed the ruling, since it allowed laws based on stereotyped gender roles that restricted women's rights and financial Independence. While it provided protection from long hours to white women, it did not extend to women of color, food processors, agricultural workers, and women who worked in white-collar jobs. The government interest in public welfare out…
• Bunting v. Oregon
• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 208
• Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905)
• Adkins v. Children's Hospital, 261 U.S. 525 (1923)
• Becker, Mary E. (1986). "From Muller v. Oregon to Fetal Vulnerability Policies". University of Chicago Law Review. 53 (4): 1219–1273. doi:10.2307/1599748. JSTOR 1599748.
• Bernstein, David E. (2011). Rehabilitating Lochner: Defending Individual Rights against Progressive Reform. Chapter 4. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-04353-3
• Works related to Muller v. Oregon at Wikisource
• Text of Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908) is available from: Cornell CourtListener Findlaw Google Scholar Justia Library of Congress Oyez (oral argument audio) This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
• Women Working (1800-1930)