Lochner V. New York Case Summary

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Lochner v. New York Legal Review
The 1904 Supreme Court case of Lochner v. New York addressed the constitutionality of the state of New York’s Bakeshop Act of 1895 and whether it violated the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Joseph Lochner, a bakery owner, after being fined multiple times, was charged with violating the state statue, which prohibited bakery workers from working more than sixty hours a week or ten hours a day. Upon appealing to the higher court, the Fuller Court, with a verdict of 5-4, decided in favor of Lochner, refuting the law. The ruling was unjust because the intersection of patriarchy and class discrimination validates the nullification of the law as irreversible consequences of the freedom to contract in a market economy.
The majority opinion of the court affirmed that the state law interferers with the freedom of contract between employers and their employees. The justices referred to the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which states that “no state can …show more content…
Oregon. The court participated in gender formation, as it systemized gender relations and upheld the constitutionality of worker regulations for women because they were perceived as more vulnerable and the weaker sex, belonging in a subordinate class. Instead of supporting limitations on hours applicable to all workers, the court based its ruling on patriarchic sentiments stated explicitly in their decision, “a law providing that no laborer shall be required or permitted to work in bakeries more than sixty hours in a week or ten hours in a day was not as to men a legitimate exercise of the police power of the state” (Muller v. Oregon, 83) It established two different sets of laws for two groups of people. Therefore, this case validated the predominant male supremacy of the time. Structural inequities and historical marginalization prevented men from easily moving up the socioeconomic
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