--- title: "Lochner v. New York" type: Landmark Case source: https://casebriefly.com/landmark-cases/lochner-v-new-york --- # Lochner v. New York Lochner v. New York is one of the most criticized cases in Supreme Court history, striking down a maximum working hours law for bakers as violating a substantive due process right to freedom of contract. The case gave its name to the 'Lochner era,' during which the Court aggressively struck down economic regulations, and it remains a cautionary example of judicial overreach in constitutional law courses. ## Citation 198 U.S. 45 (1905) ## Year 1905 ## Court Supreme Court of the United States ## Facts New York enacted the Bakeshop Act, which prohibited bakery employees from working more than 60 hours per week or 10 hours per day. The law was intended to protect the health of bakers, who worked in conditions associated with respiratory illness. Joseph Lochner, a bakery owner in Utica, New York, was convicted and fined for permitting an employee to work more than 60 hours in one week. He challenged the law as violating the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. ## Procedural History Lochner was convicted in state court and his conviction was affirmed by the New York appellate courts. The Supreme Court granted review. ## Issue Does the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause protect a liberty of contract that prevents states from enacting maximum working hours legislation for bakers? ## Holding The Court held 5-4 that the Bakeshop Act violated the Due Process Clause by unreasonably interfering with the liberty of contract between employers and employees. The majority concluded that bakery work was not sufficiently unhealthy to justify the state's exercise of police power and that the law was not a legitimate health regulation but an improper labor regulation. ## Reasoning Justice Peckham's majority opinion recognized a fundamental right to freedom of contract implicit in the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of liberty. While acknowledging that states could exercise police power to protect health, safety, and morals, the Court held that such exercises must have a direct, substantial connection to a legitimate end. The majority found the Bakeshop Act was not truly a health measure because bakers were not uniquely vulnerable to health risks from long hours, and the real purpose of the law was to regulate labor relations, which exceeded the state's police power. ## Dissent Justice Holmes wrote a famous dissent arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Herbert Spencer's Social Statics and that the Constitution permits states to regulate economic matters as long as a reasonable person could regard the law as a rational response to a perceived problem. Justice Harlan also dissented, arguing the evidence supported the legislature's judgment that bakery work posed genuine health risks. ## Impact Lochner inaugurated an era of aggressive judicial invalidation of economic regulation that lasted until the late 1930s. The case is now universally regarded as wrongly decided and serves as the paradigmatic example of improperly reading economic ideology into the Constitution. The term 'Lochnerizing' has become shorthand for judicial activism, and the case is invoked across the political spectrum as a warning against courts substituting their policy preferences for legislative judgments. ## Key Quotes - The general right to make a contract in relation to his business is part of the liberty of the individual protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. - The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics. -- Justice Holmes, dissenting - A constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory, whether of paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the State or of laissez faire. -- Justice Holmes, dissenting ## Related Cases - west-coast-hotel-v-parrish - griswold-v-connecticut - roe-v-wade - planned-parenthood-v-casey ## Exam Relevance Lochner is tested in substantive due process questions, particularly those involving economic rights versus personal liberties. Professors use it to explore the boundaries between legitimate judicial review and judicial activism. Students should be prepared to compare the Lochner era's protection of economic rights with the modern Court's protection of personal autonomy rights under substantive due process. ## Study Tips - Understand why Lochner is considered wrongly decided and what it teaches about the dangers of substantive due process. - Read and memorize key passages from Justice Holmes's dissent -- it is one of the most frequently cited dissents in constitutional law. - Be able to compare the Lochner era's approach to economic substantive due process with the modern approach after West Coast Hotel. - Consider how Lochner's critics address the counterargument that all substantive due process, including the protection of privacy rights, involves similar judicial value judgments. ## Doctrine Established Liberty of Contract / Economic Substantive Due Process --- Source: [Lochner v. New York — CaseBriefly](https://casebriefly.com/landmark-cases/lochner-v-new-york)