Statement of the Case. 261 U.S. 7. Legislative abridgment of this freedom can only be justified by the existence of exceptional circumstances. P. 546. 8. Review of former decisions concerning interferences with liberty of contract, by (a) Statutes fixing the rates and charges of businesses affected by a public interest. P. 546. (b) Statutes relating to the performance of contracts for public work. P. 547. (c) Statutes prescribing the character, methods and time for payment of wages. Id. (d) Statutes fixing hours of labor. Id. 9. Legislation fixing hours or conditions of work may properly take into account the physical differences between men and women; but, in view of the equality of legal status, now established in this country, the doctrine that women of mature age require, or may be subjected to, restrictions upon their liberty of contract which could not lawfully be imposed on men in similar circumstances, must be rejected. P. 552. 10. The limited legislative authority to regulate hours of labor in special occupations, on the ground of health, affords no support to a wage-fixing law, the two subjects are essentially different. P. 553. 11. The Minimum Wage Act of Sept. 19, 1918, c. 174, 40 Stat. 960, in assuming to authorize the fixing of minimum wage standards for adult women, in any occupation in the District of Columbia, such standards to be based wholly upon what a board and its advisers may find to be an adequate wage to meet the necessary cost of living for women workers in each particular calling and to maintain them in good health and protect their morals, is an unconstitutional interference with the liberty of contract. P. 554. 284 Fed. 613, affirmed. APPEALS from decrees of the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia, affirming two decrees, entered, on mandate from that court, by the Supreme Court of the District, permanently enjoining the appellants from enforcing orders fixing minimum wages under the District of Columbia Minimum Wage Act. Mr. Felix Frankfurter, with whom Mr. Francis H. Stephens was on the brief, for appellants. 525 Argument for Appellants. The presumption to be accorded an act of Congressthat it be respected unless transgression of the Constitution is shown "beyond a rational doubt "-amply sustains the District of Columbia Minimum Wage Law, particularly in view of the circumstances of its enactment. Congress, under Art. I, § 8, cl. 17, is possessed of the same power and charged with the same duty of legislating within the District as belongs to the States within their respective boundaries. Congress, in dealing with a practical problem, followed the example of many States in passing the act in question. Such legislation has uniformly been sustained by the courts. State v. Crow, 130 Ark. 272; Holcombe v. Creamer, 231 Mass. 99; Williams v. Evans, 139 Minn. 32; Miller Telephone Co. v. Minimum Wage Commission, 145 Minn. 262; Stettler v. O'Hara, 69 Ore. 519; and Simpson v. O'Hara, 70 Ore. 261, affirmed by divided court in 243 U. S. 629; Larson v. Rice, 100 Wash. 642; Spokane Hotel Co. v. Younger, 113 Wash. 359; Poye v. State, 89 Tex. Crim. Rep. 182. Congress did not, however, rely upon a body of state laws sustained by the courts and vindicated by experience. Senate and House Committees held hearings on the needs of this legislation, in view of the conditions prevailing in the District. No one appeared to oppose the bill. An organized body of employers endorsed the bill and urged its passage. The Committees unanimously recommended the legislation. H. Rep. No. 571, 65th Cong., 2d sess.; S. Rep. No. 562, 65th Cong., 2d sess. And the bill was passed without opposition in the House, and only twelve "nays" in the Senate. Moreover, the judgment of Congress has now been vindicated by the results of over four years in the actual operation of the law, and ten years of extensive experience with such legislation in California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin. Unfair depression in the wages of many women workers has been significantly reduced, without adversely affecting Argument for Appellants. 261 U.S. industry or diminishing appreciably employment for employables. The legislation has also successfully weathered the severest strains of "hard times." It is urged with confidence that no such body of laws "attesting a widespread belief in the necessities of such legislation," Prudential Insurance Co. v. Cheek, 259 U. S. 530, supported by uniform judicial approval, subjected to so long, extensive, fair and favorable a test of actual experience, has ever been before this Court, to vindicate the reasonableness of the legislative intervention and to negative the claim that Congress was guilty of" a purely arbitrary or capricious exercise of that [legislative] power." Truax v. Corrigan, 257 U. S. 312, 329. Congress aimed at "ends" that are "legitimate and within the scope of the Constitution." McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 421. Charged with the responsibility of safeguarding the welfare of the women and children of the District of Columbia, it found that alarming public evils had resulted, and threatened in increasing measure, from the widespread existence of a deficit between the essential needs for decent life and the actual earnings of large numbers of women workers of the District. In the judgment of Congress, based upon unchallenged facts, these conditions impaired the health of this generation of women and thereby threatened the coming generation through undernourishment, demoralizing shelter and insufficient medical care. In its immediate effects, also, financial burdens were imposed upon the District, involving excessive and unproductive taxation, for the support of charitable institutions engaged in impotent amelioration rather than prevention. Here, if ever, was presented a community problem of a most compelling kind, calling for legislation "greatly and immediately necessary to the public welfare." Noble State Bank v. Haskell, 219 U. S. 104, 111. The purpose of the act was to provide for the deficit between the cost of women's 525 Argument for Appellants. labor, i. e., the means necessary to keep labor going-and any rate of women's pay below the minimum level for living, and thereby to eliminate all the evils attendant upon such deficit upon a large scale. There is no dispute that Congress was acting in good faith, after mature deliberation, in avowing the purposes which it did in the enactment of this law, to wit: "To protect the women and minors of the District from conditions detrimental to their health and morals, resulting from wages which are inadequate to maintain decent standards of life." Having regard to the concrete situation, the judgment of Congress that such legislation was necessary cannot in reason be stigmatized as unreasonable. The means selected by Congress "are appropriate and "plainly adapted" (McCulloch v. Maryland, supra) to accomplish the legitimate ends. The possible alternatives open to Congress in this situation were: (1), to submit to the evils as inevitable human misfortunes, subject only to alleviation through public and private charity; (2), provide a direct subsidy out of the public treasury to pay a wage equal to the necessary cost of living; (3), adopt the Massachusetts method, which seeks to compel for women workers a minimum wage through the pressure of public exposure of offending employers; or, (4), take the method it did take, which involved a prohibition of the use of women's labor for less than its cost except by special license from the Board. There was cumulative testimony, both in the belief of those entitled to express an opinion and in the actual record of experience, that these evils are not inevitable human misfortune. Congress was entitled to disprove that lazy gospel of fatalism as other English-speaking countries equally jealous of safeguarding liberty and property, and many American States, had disproved it. From the point of view of effectiveness in accomplishing its purposes, the choice of Congress, among the three re Argument for Appellants. 261 U.S. or un medial methods, surely was not "arbitrary" reasonable." It had the support of a great body of public opinion, (see Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11, 31, 34–35; Muller v. Oregon, 208 U. S. 412, 420; McLean v. Arkansas, 211 U. S. 539, 548-9; Tanner v. Little, 240 U. S. 369, 385-6), crystallized in the extensive and successful experience of English countries with such legislation, in the fact of such legislation in other States, in the successful working of such legislation. In other words, Congress rested upon the appeal "from judgment by speculation to judgment by experience." Tanner v. Little, 240 U. S. 369, 386. Where a law has been long on the statute books, speculative claims of injustice must yield to the results of actual experience. Cf. National Union Fire Ins. Co. v. Wanberg, 260 U. S. 71. No rights of plaintiffs secured under the Constitution prohibit the use of the means adopted by Congress in the Minimum Wage Law to accomplish legitimate public ends. It is for the plaintiff to show some explicit withdrawal of the legislative power as exercised in this case. The only alleged obstruction is the "due process" clause. And the only point for consideration is whether the deprivation of " liberty " or " property " which is involved is "without due process of law." This Court has consistently recognized the futility of defining "due process." The "due process " clauses embody a standard of fair dealing to be applied to the myriad variety of facts that are involved in modern legislation. That is why this Court has refused to draw lines in adThe impact of facts must establish the line in each case. The application of "due process" clauses is, in the last analysis, a process of judgment by this Court. In the application of the varying facts to the test of fair dealing the ultimate question in this Court is, does legislation, or its actual operation, "shock the sense of fairness vance. |