Adkins v. Children's Hospital 261 U.S. 525 (1923)

AuthorLeonard W. Levy
Pages35-36

Page 35

The Adkins case climaxed the assimilation of laissez-faire economics into constitutional law. At issue was the constitutionality of a congressional minimum wage law for women and children in the District of Columbia. (See DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA MINIMUM WAGE ACT.) The impact of the case was nationwide, affecting all similar state legislation. In the exercise of its police power over the District, Congress in 1918 established an administrative board with investigatory powers over wages and living standards for underprivileged, unorganized workers. After notice and hearing, the board could order wage increases by fixing minima for women and minors. The board followed a general standard set by the legislature: wages had to be reasonably sufficient to keep workers "in good health" and "protect their morals." A corporation maintaining a hospital in the District and a woman who had lost a job paying $35 a month and two meals daily claimed that the statute violated the Fifth Amendment's DUE PROCESS clause which protected their FREEDOM OF CONTRACT on terms mutually desirable.

The constitutionality of minimum wage legislation had come before the Court in STETTLER V. O ' HARA (1917) but because Justice LOUIS D. BRANDEIS had disqualified himself, the Court had split evenly, settling nothing. In the same year, however, Professor FELIX FRANKFURTER won from the Court a decision sustaining the constitutionality of a state maximum hours law in BUNTING V. OREGON (1917). Although the Court sustained that law for men as well as for women and children, it neglected to overrule LOCHNER V. NEW YORK (1905). In that case the Court had held that minimum wage laws for bakers violated the freedom of contract protected by due process of law. Nevertheless, Bunting seemed to supersede Lochner and followed Justice OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES ' Lochner dissent. The Court in Bunting presumed the constitutionality of the statute, disavowed examination of the legislature's wisdom in exercising its POLICE POWER, and asserted that the reasonableness of the legislation need not be proved; the burden of proving unreasonableness fell upon those opposed to the social measure.

Because Bunting superseded Lochner without overruling it, Frankfurter, who again defended the constitutionality of the statute, took no chances in Adkins. He relied on the principles of Bunting, the plenary powers of Congress over the District, and the overwhelmingly favorable state court...

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