lack Letter
PALSU.S. Supreme Court (Justice Peckham; 5–4), 1905draftborradorunverifiedsin verificar

Lochner v. New York

198 U.S. 45 (1905)

A baker's sixty-hour week and the Court that called it liberty

In one lineEn una línea
A maximum-hours law for bakers violated the liberty of contract protected by due process; the Court would later repudiate this approach to economic regulation.Una ley de jornada máxima para panaderos violó la libertad contractual protegida por el debido proceso; la Corte repudió después este enfoque para la regulación económica.
RuleRegla
Under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause as read in 1905, a state may limit the freedom of employer and employee to contract only as a genuine exercise of the police power (health, safety, morals, welfare); a labor law without a real and substantial relation to those ends is an unconstitutional interference with liberty of contract.
Why this case is herePor qué está aquí este caso
Assigned for October 30 with Loving to frame the discussion question: what separates liberalism in the economic sense from liberalism in the civil-rights sense? Lochner is the high point of economic liberty as a constitutional right; the Court abandoned that path in 1937 while keeping strict review for the personal rights Loving protects.
Procedural posturePostura procesal
Lochner, a Utica bakery owner, was convicted and fined under New York's Bakeshop Act for letting an employee work more than sixty hours in a week; the New York courts affirmed; the U.S. Supreme Court reversed.

Facts

New York’s Bakeshop Act of 1895 forbade bakery employees from working more than ten hours a day or sixty hours a week. Joseph Lochner owned a bakery in Utica and was fined for allowing an employee to work beyond the limit. He argued that the law took away his and his workers’ liberty to agree on hours.

Procedural posture

Convicted in state court and fined; the New York appellate courts affirmed the conviction and upheld the statute. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed, 5–4.

Issue

Whether a state maximum-hours law for bakers is a legitimate exercise of the police power, or an unreasonable interference with the liberty of contract protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

Holding

The law was an unconstitutional interference with liberty of contract. It was not a genuine health measure: baking was not an unusually unhealthy trade, bakers were adults capable of looking after themselves, and the hours limit had no direct relation to public health. Judgment reversed.

Reasoning

The majority accepted that the states may regulate contracts under the police power, but insisted that the regulation have a real and substantial relation to health, safety, morals or welfare. Reviewing the evidence itself, the Court found the health argument too remote and concluded that the statute was in reality a labor regulation that favored one side of the bargain, which the Constitution does not permit. Justice Harlan’s dissent would have deferred to the legislature given plausible evidence that long hours harmed bakers’ health. Justice Holmes’s dissent went further: the case was decided on an economic theory most of the country did not share, and a constitution is made for people of fundamentally differing views; the word liberty is perverted when used to block the natural outcome of a dominant opinion unless the law violates fundamental principles of our traditions.

Rule (own words)

In its time, Lochner meant that courts would weigh for themselves whether an economic regulation was really needed. The modern rule is the reverse: economic and social legislation stands if any rational basis supports it, and courts reserve close scrutiny for laws that burden fundamental personal rights or target suspect classes.

What-ifs

  • If the law had applied only to minors or to a demonstrably hazardous trade such as mining, even the 1905 Court would likely have upheld it (it had upheld a miners’ hours law in Holden v. Hardy).
  • If the same law were challenged today, it would pass rational-basis review almost automatically.
  • If a state today limited whom a person may marry or how a family may live, the Court would apply the stricter scrutiny Loving used: same clause, different kind of liberty.

Class notes

Bring the discussion question written out: economic liberalism (freedom of contract, property, markets, minimal regulation) versus civil-rights liberalism (personal autonomy, equality, protection of minorities). Lochner protected the first and was repudiated; Loving protects the second and remains the model. The Mexican parallel: the 1917 Constitution went the other way from the start, constitutionalizing labor rights (art. 123) and social property (art. 27) while leaving economic freedom to the ordinary legislator.

Likely follow-upsRepreguntas probables

What did the Court say the Bakeshop Act really was?
A labor law pure and simple, not a health law: bakers were not a vulnerable class and the health rationale was too thin to justify the interference with contract.
What is Holmes's point in dissent?
A constitution is not meant to embody one economic theory; majorities may regulate unless the law offends fundamental principles as understood by our traditions. The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact a laissez-faire textbook.
When and how did the Lochner era end?
West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937) upheld a minimum wage; since then economic regulation gets rational-basis review while laws touching personal liberties or suspect classes get strict scrutiny (the Carolene Products footnote 4 division).
Why read it next to Loving?
Both use the word liberty in the Due Process Clause. The Court stopped protecting economic liberty strongly but kept protecting personal liberties like marriage; the discussion asks whether that line is principled.
due process (procedural and substantive)substantive due processliberty of contractpolice powerrational basis reviewLochner era (1905–1937)

Compare withComparar con: Loving v. Virginia (contrasts), Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States (contrasts)

AssignedAsignado: 2026-10-30

Read the public opinionLeer la opinión (texto público). SourceFuente: Own brief from the public opinion, written for the Oct. 30 reading; verify details against the opinion..