Master The Supreme Court struck down New York's maximum-hours law for bakers as an unconstitutional infringement of liberty of contract under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. with this comprehensive case brief.
Lochner v. New York is the emblematic case of the substantive due process era of economic regulation, often invoked as a cautionary tale about judicial overreach into legislative judgments on social and economic policy. Decided in 1905, the case invalidated a New York statute that limited bakers to working no more than ten hours a day and sixty hours a week, on the ground that it unconstitutionally interfered with the liberty of contract protected by the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. The majority framed the question as whether the statute was a legitimate exercise of the state police power to protect health and safety or instead an arbitrary, unnecessary, and unreasonable interference with individual economic freedom.
The decision catalyzed what is commonly called the "Lochner era," a period in which the Court frequently subjected economic regulations to heightened skepticism and invalidated many on substantive due process grounds. Although Lochner itself has never been formally overruled, its approach to economic regulation was decisively rejected beginning in the 1930s. Today, Lochner sits in the constitutional anti-canon, studied to understand the evolution of substantive due process, the judicial role in reviewing economic and social legislation, and the modern tiers of scrutiny that replaced the case-by-case reasonableness analysis the decision applied.
Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905)
In 1895, New York enacted the Bakeshop Act, a comprehensive statute regulating bakeries. Among other sanitation and safety provisions, Section 110 imposed a maximum-hours rule: no baker could be permitted to work more than ten hours in any one day or sixty hours in any one week. Joseph Lochner, who owned a bakery in Utica, was indicted for violating Section 110 by allowing an employee to work beyond the weekly limit. He was convicted (as a second offense) and fined $50. Lochner argued that the hours limitation infringed the liberty of contract protected by the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause and was not a valid exercise of the state police power. The New York courts, including the New York Court of Appeals, upheld the statute and Lochner's conviction. Lochner sought review in the U.S. Supreme Court, contending that, unlike regulations directly related to health and safety, the hours cap was an arbitrary interference with private employment contracts in a relatively healthy occupation.
Does New York's statutory limit on bakery employees' working hours violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause by unconstitutionally interfering with the liberty of contract, because it is not a valid exercise of the state's police power to protect health, safety, or welfare?
Under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, individuals possess a substantive liberty of contract interest. While a state may, pursuant to its police power, enact laws regulating health, safety, morals, and the general welfare, a statute that interferes with liberty of contract must bear a real and substantial relation to a legitimate police-power objective and be a fair, reasonable, and appropriate exercise of that power. If the law is an unnecessary, unreasonable, or arbitrary interference with the right to contract and is not genuinely aimed at protecting health or safety, it violates the Due Process Clause.
No. The New York maximum-hours law for bakers is unconstitutional because it is not a valid health or safety regulation but an arbitrary interference with the liberty of contract protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Majority (Justice Peckham): The Court recognized that the Fourteenth Amendment protects liberty of contract, citing Allgeyer v. Louisiana, but also acknowledged that the state may regulate pursuant to its police power to protect health, safety, morals, and welfare. The decisive inquiry is whether the statute bears a real and substantial relation to those ends. The majority concluded that the baking trade, unlike mining or smelting (upheld in Holden v. Hardy), is not so dangerous or unhealthy as to justify a categorical maximum-hours restriction. The statute appeared less a health law and more a labor regulation aimed at equalizing bargaining power. Because the hours limit was not shown to be necessary or appropriately tailored to protect bakers’ health, and because other sanitation provisions in the Bakeshop Act already addressed genuine health concerns, the hours cap was deemed an arbitrary and unnecessary restraint on liberty of contract. Dissent (Justice Harlan, joined by Justices White and Day): The dissent argued for deference to legislative judgments where there is any rational basis to believe the law promotes health or safety. Citing legislative facts and medical reports about the conditions of bakeries, Harlan contended that long hours in cramped, dusty, and poorly ventilated bake shops posed real health risks, and that the statute bore a reasonable relation to reducing those risks. Under a deferential standard, the law should be upheld. Dissent (Justice Holmes): Holmes criticized the majority for constitutionalizing a preference for laissez-faire economics: "The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics." He argued that unless a statute violates a specific constitutional prohibition or lacks any rational justification, courts should defer to democratic choices about economic policy. Holmes emphasized that many accepted laws (e.g., Sunday closing laws, usury laws) limit contracts; the existence of such laws shows that the Constitution permits reasonable regulation of economic life.
Lochner defined and epitomized the early twentieth-century substantive due process approach to economic regulation, under which courts scrutinized whether a law genuinely advanced health, safety, or welfare and invalidated laws seen as paternalistic or redistributive. The decision inaugurated the "Lochner era," during which the Court often invalidated wage, hour, and labor regulations as infringements on liberty of contract. Beginning with cases like Nebbia v. New York (1934) and culminating in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937) and United States v. Carolene Products (1938), the Court abandoned Lochner’s heightened skepticism of economic regulation in favor of deferential rational-basis review. Lochner remains central for understanding modern substantive due process: the repudiation of its approach to economic legislation coexists with the continued recognition of substantive due process in personal rights cases, and the term "Lochnerizing" is used to criticize courts perceived as substituting their policy preferences for legislative judgment.
Lochner held that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause protects a substantive liberty of contract that limits state regulation of economic affairs. While acknowledging the state’s police power, the Court required a law that burdens contractual freedom to bear a real and substantial relation to health, safety, morals, or welfare. New York’s bakery-hours cap failed that test and was struck down as an arbitrary interference with liberty of contract.
In Holden v. Hardy (1898), the Court upheld an eight-hour law for miners and smelters, finding mining unusually dangerous and thus within the police power. The Lochner majority distinguished baking as not comparably hazardous. In Muller v. Oregon (1908), the Court upheld maximum hours for women based on purported health and maternalist rationales, accepting extensive sociological evidence (the "Brandeis Brief"). Together, these cases show the era’s line-drawing: courts upheld regulations when convinced of concrete health risks or special circumstances, but struck them down when viewed as paternalistic labor regulation.
Not explicitly. However, its core approach to economic regulation was effectively abandoned. Nebbia v. New York (1934) recognized broad state power to regulate business in the public interest; West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937) rejected liberty of contract as a barrier to minimum wage laws; and United States v. Carolene Products (1938) entrenched deferential rational-basis review for ordinary economic legislation. These decisions functionally superseded Lochner.
Lochner applied a reasonableness inquiry requiring a "real and substantial relation" to legitimate ends, coupled with a willingness to scrutinize legislative justifications—effectively a more exacting review than modern rational-basis scrutiny. Today, most economic regulations receive highly deferential rational-basis review, while heightened scrutiny is reserved for suspect classifications or burdens on fundamental rights. Lochner’s searching review of economic laws is rejected in modern doctrine.
Lochner is foundational for understanding the development of substantive due process, the judicial role in reviewing economic versus personal rights, and the shift to modern deference for economic regulation. It also supplies an enduring caution—cited by critics across the spectrum—against courts imposing their policy preferences under the guise of constitutional interpretation. At the same time, it prompts debate about the limits of legislative power and the judiciary’s duty to police those limits.
Lochner v. New York stands as a defining case in the constitutional history of substantive due process and the judiciary’s engagement with economic regulation. The Court’s invalidation of New York’s bakery-hours law, grounded in a robust conception of liberty of contract and a skeptical view of the law’s health justification, shaped decades of constitutional adjudication and spurred sharp scholarly and judicial reactions.
Although its methodology has been repudiated for economic regulation, Lochner remains indispensable for law students. It illuminates the boundaries of the police power, the evolution from reasonableness review to modern tiers of scrutiny, the tension between judicial review and democratic governance, and the continuing controversies over substantive due process in other domains.