Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/264/292/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 06:02:21+00:00

Document:
Argued: Jan. 17 and 18, 1924.
Messrs. Walter F. Hofheims, of Buffalo, N. Y., and Irving I. Goldsmith, of Saratoga Springs, N. Y., for the People of the State of New York.
An appeal was prosecuted through intermediate appellate courts to the Court of Appeals, where the judgment was affirmed without an opinion. The record having been remitted to the City Court, the writ of error was allowed to that court. Aldrich v. AEtna Co., 8 Wall. 491, 495, 19 L. Ed. 473; Hodges v. Snyder, 261 U. S. 600, 601, 43 Sup. Ct. 435, 67 L. Ed. 819.
1. The basis of the first contention is that the statute unduly and arbitrarily interferes with the liberty of two adult persons to make a contract of employment for themselves. The answer of the state is that night work of the kind prohibited so injuriously affects the physical condition of women, and so threatens to impair their peculiar and natural functions, and so exposes them to the dangers and menaces incident to night life in large cities, that a statute prohibiting such work falls within the police power of the state to preserve and promote the public health and welfare.
Adkins v. Children's Hospital, 261 U. S. 525, 43 Sup. Ct. 394, 67 L. Ed. 785, 24 A. L. R. 1238, is cited and relied upon; but that case presented a question entirely different from that now being considered. The statute in the Adkins Case was a wage-fixing law, pure and simple. It had nothing to do with the hours or conditions of labor. We held that it exacted from the employer 'an arbitrary payment for a purpose and upon a basis having no causal connection with the business, or the contract or the work' of the employee; but, referring to the Muller Case we said (page 553) that 'the physical differences between men and women must be recognized in appropriate cases, and legislation fixing hours or conditions of work may properly take them into account.' See also Riley v. Massachusetts, 232 U. S. 671, 34 Sup. Ct. 469, 58 L. Ed. 788; Miller v. Wilson, 236 U. S. 373, 35 Sup. Ct. 342, 59 L. Ed. 628, L. R. A. 1915F, 829; Bosley v. McLaughlin, 236 U. S. 385, 35 Sup. Ct. 345, 59 L. Ed. 632; and compare Truax v. Raich, 239 U. S. 33, 41, 36 Sup. Ct. 7, 60 L. Ed. 131, L. R. A. 1916D, 545, Ann. Cas. 1917B, 283, and Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U. S. 1, 18, 19, 35 Sup. Ct. 240, 59 L. Ed. 441, L. R. A. 1915C, 960.
2. Nor is the statute vulnerable to the objection that it constitutes a denial of the equal protection of the laws. The points urged under this head are (a) that the act discriminates between cities of the first and second class and other cities and communities; and (b) excludes from its operation women employed in restaurants as singers and performers, attendants in ladies' cloak rooms and parlors, as well as those employed in dining rooms and kitchens of hotels and in lunch rooms or restaurants conducted by employers solely for the benefit of their employees.

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