Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/236/385/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 04:14:47+00:00

Document:
The nature of the work of pharmacists and student nurses in hospitals and the importance to the public that it should not be performed by those overfatigued, make it a proper subject for legislative control as to hours of labor of women so employed.
Whether there is necessity for limiting the hours of labor of women pharmacists and nurses in hospitals is a matter for legislative, and not judicial, control, and the legislature is not prevented by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from limiting such labor to eight hours a day or a maximum of forty-eight hours a week. Such a restriction is not so palpably arbitrary as to be an unconstitutional invasion of the liberty of contract.
Miller v. Wilson, ante, p. 236 U. S. 373, followed in regard to the right of the legislature to limit the hours of labor of women other than pharmacists and student nurses employed in hospitals in California.
An exception of graduate nurses from the operation of a statute limiting the hours of labor of women is not so arbitrary, either as to female pharmacists or student nurses in hospitals, as to make the statute unconstitutional as denying equal protection of the law. The distinction in their employment is one of which the legislature may take notice.
Enforcement of a state police statute will not be enjoined on the ground that it violates the equal protection provision of the Fourteenth Amendment where the bill fails to show, as to the persons attacking the statute, any such injury, actual or threatened, as warrants resort to a court of equity.
The California Statute of 1911, as amended in 1913, limiting the hours of labor of women in certain employments, including those in hospitals, to eight hours in any one day or a maximum of forty-eight hours a week is not unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment either as unduly abridging the liberty of contract or as denying equal protection of the law because graduate nurses were excepted therefrom.
The facts, which involve the constitutionality under the Fourteenth Amendment of the California Women's Eight Hour Labor Law, are stated in the opinion.
hours in any one week. The act is the same as that which was under consideration in Miller v. Wilson, 236 U. S. 373, as amended in 1913. By the amendment, the statute was extended to public lodging houses, apartment houses, hospitals, and places of amusement. The proviso was also amended so as to make the statute inapplicable to "graduate nurses in hospitals." Stat. (Cal.) 1913, p. 713.
"pursued and completed at some training school for nurses in a hospital, courses of study and training in the profession or occupation of nursing and attending the sick and injured,"
and had received diplomas or certificates of graduation. By reason of their qualifications, they were paid "a compensation greatly in excess of that paid to female pupils engaged in nursing in hospitals while students of the training school."
employed in hospitals." The apprehended injury to the complainant Nelson by reason of the interference of the statute with her freedom to contract was specially alleged.
It was also set forth that the hospital maintained a school with a three years' course of study wherein women were trained to nurse the sick and injured; that in this school there were enrolled twenty-four in the third-year class, eighteen in the second-year class, and twenty-three in the first-year class; that a part of the "education and training" of these "student nurses" consisted in "aiding, nursing, and attending to the wants of the sick and injured persons" in the hospital, this work being done while the student was pursuing the prescribed course of study; that the student nurses were paid $10 a month during each of the first two years of their course and $12.50 a month in the third year, and were also provided throughout the three years "with free board, lodging, and laundry." It was averred that the cost to the hospital of maintaining the school was $2,500 a month, and that the cost of procuring the work to be performed by graduate nurses that was being done by the student nurses would be not less than $3,600 a month. It was set forth as a reason why the work of the student nurses was done at less expense, that their compensation was paid not only in money, board, etc., but also partially in their education and training, their attendance on patients being, in itself, an indispensable part of their course of preparation. It was said further that their hours of labor must be determined by the exigencies of the cases they were attending.
The enforcement of the act with respect to these student nurses, it was stated, would require the hospital either to cease the operation of the school or largely to increase the number in attendance in order that an equal return in service could be obtained, and such increase would involve a greatly enlarged expense.
that it interfered with their liberty of contract, and denied to them the equal protection of the laws, contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment. And in support it was asserted in substance that labor in hospitals did not afford, in itself, a basis for classification; that there was no difference between such labor and the "same kind of labor" performed elsewhere; that a hospital is not an unhealthful or unsanitary place; and, generally, that the statute and its distinctions were arbitrary.
"all the allegations of fact set forth in the bill were true; that the fact that a woman was a graduate nurse merely showed that she had completed a course of study for the treatment of the sick, but that the course of study which a woman must take for that purpose was not prescribed by law or fixed by custom, but was such as any hospital or training school might, in the discretion of its governing officers, see fit to prescribe; that the difference between a graduate nurse and an experienced nurse is a difference of technical education only, and that there is no standard by which this difference can be measured; that graduate nurses working in and employed by hospitals do not ordinarily perform therein the work of nursing the sick, but act as overseers to assistants to the medical staff."
The district judge thereupon stated that, upon the hearing of the motion for an interlocutory injunction, it had been held that the complaint did not state a cause of action, and that it was considered unnecessary to take the evidence. The offer of proof was rejected, and the bill of complaint dismissed. No. 363 is an appeal from the final decree.
1. As to liberty of contract. The gravamen of the bill is with respect to the complainant Nelson, a graduate pharmacist, and the student nurses. As to the former, it appears that a statute of California limits the hours of labor of pharmacists to ten hours a day and sixty hours a week. Stat. (Cal.) 1905, p. 28. In view of the nature of their work, and the extreme importance to the public that it should not be performed by those who are suffering from overfatigue, there can be no doubt as to the legislative power reasonably to limit the hours of labor in that occupation. This the appellants expressly concede. But, this being admitted to be obviously within the authority of the legislature, there is no ground for asserting that the right to contractual freedom precludes the legislature from prohibiting women pharmacists from working for more than eight hours a day in hospitals. The mere question whether, in such case a practical exigency exists -- that is, whether such a requirement is expedient -- must be regarded as a matter for legislative, not judicial, consideration.
"These long hours have always formed a persistent and at times an apparently immovable obstacle in efforts to improve the education of nurses and to establish a rational adjustment of practice to theory. . . . Ten or more hours a day in addition to class work and study might be endured for a period of two years without obvious or immediate injury to health. The same hours carried on for three years would prove a serious strain upon the student's physical resources, inflicting perhaps irreparable injury. The conclusions reached in this first study of working hours of students (1896) were that they were universally excessive, that their requirement reacted injuriously not only upon the students, but eventually upon the patients and the hospital, that it was a short-sighted and unjustifiable economy in hospital administration which permitted it to exist. Fifteen years later, statistics show that though the course of training has now in the great majority of schools been lengthened to three years, shorter hours of work have not generally accompanied this change, and that progress in that direction has been slow and unsatisfactory."
exacting work, done under abnormal conditions, and all the extraordinary, subtile, intangible rewards and satisfactions which are bound up in it for the worker cannot alter that fact. Ten hours, or even nine hours, of work daily of this nature cannot satisfactorily be combined with theoretical instruction to form a workable educational scheme. . . . How largely the superintendents of training schools feel the need of improvement in this direction may be gathered from the fact that over two thirds of the replies to the questions on this subject suggested shorter hours as advisable or necessary, that a large proportion of these stated their firm belief in an eight-hour day, and that almost every reply which came showed clearly in one way or another the difficulties under which the schools were laboring in trying to carry on the hospital work with the existing number of students."
As to certain other women (ten in number) employed in the hospital, such as the matron, seamstress, bookkeeper, two office assistants, and five persons engaged in so-called household work, the bill contains merely this general description, without further specifications, and from any point of view it is clear that, with respect to the question of freedom of contract, no facts are alleged which are sufficient to take the case out of the rulings in Muller v. Oregon, 208 U. S. 412; Riley v. Massachusetts, 232 U. S. 671; Hawley v. Walker, 232 U.S. 718, and Miller v. Wilson, 236 U. S. 373.
and all other hospital employees on the other side of the line."
"have pursued and completed at some training school for nurses in a hospital, courses of study and training in the profession or occupation of nursing and attending the sick and injured, and have received, in recognition thereof, diplomas or certificates of graduation from said courses of study."
"graduate nurses working in and employed by hospitals do not ordinarily perform therein the work of nursing the sick, but act as overseers to assistants to the medical staff."
the legislature was without power to treat the difference as a ground for classification.
As to the ten other women employees, the validity of the distinction made in the case of graduate nurses is obvious. It should further be said, aside from the propriety of classification of women in hospitals with respect to the general conditions there obtaining (Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Melton, 218 U. S. 36, 218 U. S. 53-54), that the bill wholly fails to show as to the employment of any of these persons any such injury -- actual or threatened -- as would warrant resort to a court of equity to enjoin the enforcement of the law.

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