Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908) (U.S. Supreme Court)
Muller v. Oregon is a landmark 1908 Supreme Court decision that carved a high-profile exception to the Lochner-era emphasis on freedom of contract by upholding a statute that limited women's working hours in certain industries.
Does an Oregon statute limiting women to a maximum of ten hours of work per day in certain industries unconstitutionally interfere with freedom of contract under the Fourteenth Amendment, or is it a valid exercise of the state's police power to protect health and welfare?
Under the state's police power, a law that reasonably relates to the protection of health, safety, and welfare may limit contractual freedom without violating the Due Process Clause. In evaluating maximum-hours regulations, the Court will consider the nature of the occupation and the class of workers affected; where real differences exist that bear on health and welfare—here, the recognized physical differences and maternal functions of women—sex-specific maximum-hours laws may be sustained as reasonable health measures.
The Oregon law limiting women to a ten-hour workday in specified industries is constitutional as a reasonable health regulation under the state's police power; Muller's conviction was affirmed.
Muller is significant for three reasons. First, it marks a prominent departure from the strict Lochner-era protection of contractual liberty by recognizing broad state authority to enact health-driven labor protections. Second, it pioneered the use of empirical "legislative facts" in constitutional adjudication through the Brandeis Brief, influencing how lawyers and courts incorporate social science in constitutional cases. Third, it exposes the limits and risks of protective labor jurisprudence: the Court's endorsement of sex-based paternalism later collided with modern sex equality principles under the Equal Protection Clause and statutory antidiscrimination regimes. While Muller paved the way for upholding some labor protections (and foreshadowed decisions like Bunting v. Oregon and West Coast Hotel v. Parrish), its sex-specific rationale was undermined by later cases such as Reed v. Reed, Frontiero v. Richardson, Craig v. Boren, and United States v. Virginia, and by statutes like Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.