Morehead v. New York Ex Rel. Tipaldo

298 U.S. 587, 56 S. Ct. 918, 80 L. Ed. 1347, 1936 U.S. LEXIS 1044, 103 A.L.R. 1445

• Court: Supreme Court of the United States
• Decided: June 1, 1936
• Docket: 838
• Status: Published

Opinions

Mr. Justice Butler

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This is a habeas corpus case originating in the supreme Court of New York. Relator was indicted in the county court of Kings county and sent to jail to await trial upon the charge that as manager of a laundry he failed to obey the mandatory order of the state industrial commissioner prescribing minimum wages for women employees.

The relator’s petition for the writ avers that the statute, c. 584 of the Laws of 1933 (Cons. Law, c. 31, art. 19) under which the commissioner made the order, insofar as it purports to authorize him to fix women’s wages, is repugnant to the due process clause, Art. I, § 6, of the constitution of the State and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The application for the writ is grounded upon the claim that the state statute is substantially identical with the minimum wage law enacted by Congress for the Disrict of Columbia, 40 Stat. 960, which in 1923 was condemned by this court as repugnant to the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. Adkins v. Children’s Hospital, 261 U. S. 525.

The warden’s return, without disclosing the commissioner’s order, the prescribed wages, the findings essential to his jurisdiction to establish them, things done in pursuance. of the Act, or the allegations of the indictment, merely shows that under an order of the county court he was detaining relator for trial: The case was submitted on petition and return. The court dismissed the writ; 156 Misc. 522; 282 N. Y. S. 576. Relator took the case to the Court of Appeals. It held the Act repugnant to the due process clauses of the state and federal constitutions. 270 N. Y. 233; 200 N. E. 799. The remittitur directed that the order appealed from be reversed, the writ sustained and the prisoner discharged; it certified that the federal constitutional question was presented and necessarily passed on. The supreme court entered judgment asi directed. We granted a writ of certiorari.

The Act extends to women and minors in any “occupation” which “shall mean'an industry, trade or business or branch thereof or class of work therein in which womeii or minors are gainfully employed, but shall not include domestic service in the home of the employer or labor on a farm.” § 551 (6). It is not an emergency law. It does not regulate hours or any conditions affecting safety or protection of employees. It relates only to wages of adult women and minors. As the record is barren of details in respect of investigation, findings, amounts being paid women workers in laundries or elsewhere prior to the order, or of things done to ascertain the minimum prescribed, we must take it as granted that, if the State is permitted as against employers and their women employees to establish and enforce minimum wages, that power has been validly exerted.' It is to be assumed that the rates’ have been fairly made in accordance, with the procedure prescribed by the Act and in full compliance with the defined standards. If, consistently with the due process clause, the State may not enter upon regulation of the sort undertaken by the challenged enactment, then plainly it cannot by diligence to insure the establishment of just minima create power to enter that field. Cf. St. Joseph Stock Yards Co. v. United States, ante, p. 38; Baltimore & Ohio R. Co. v. United States, ante, p. 349.

The Adkins case, unless distinguishable, requires affirmance of the judgment below. The petition for the writ sought review upon the ground that this case is distinguishable from that one. No application has been made for reconsideration of - the constitutional question there decided.¹ The validity of the principles upon which that decision rests is not challenged. This court confines itself to the ground upon which the writ was asked or granted. Alice State Bank v. Houston Pasture Co., 247 U. S. 240, 242. Clark v. Williard, 294 U. S. 211, 216. Here the review granted was no broader than that sought by the petitioner. Johnson v. Manhattan Ry. Co., 289 U. S. 479, 494. He is not entitled and does not ask to be heard upon the question whether the Adkins case should be overruled. He maintains that it may be distinguished on the ground that the statutes are vitally dissimilar.

The District of Columbia Act provided for a board to ascertain and declare “standards of minimum wages” for women in any occupation and what wages were, “inadequate to supply the necessary cost of living to any such women workers to maintain them in good health and to protect their morals.” § 9. Violations were punishable by fine and imprisonment. § 18. The declared purposes were to protect women from conditions detrimental to their health and morals, resulting from wages inadequate to maintain decent standards of living. § 23.

The New York Act declares it to be against public policy for any employer to employ any woman at an oppressive and unreasonable wage (§ 552) defined as one which is “both less than the fair and reasonable value of the services rendered and less than sufficient to meet the minimum cost of living necessary for health.” § 551 (7). “A fair wage” is one “fairly and reasonably commensurate with the value of the service or class of service rendered.” § 551 (8). If the commissioner is of opinion that any substantial number of women in any occupation are receiving.oppressive and unreasonable wages he shall appoint a wage board to report upon the establishment of minimum fair wage rates. § 554. After investigation, the board shall submit a report including its recommendations as to minimum fair wage standards. § 555.

And for administrative guidance, the Act declares: “In establishing a minimum fair wage for any service or class of service under this article the commissioner and . the wage board without being-bound by any technical rules of evidence or procedure (1) may take into account all relevant circumstances- affecting the value of the service or class of service rendered, and (2) may.be guided by like considerations as would guide a court in a suit for the reasonable value of services rendered where services are rendered at the request of an employer without contract as to the amount of the wage to be paid, and (?) may consider the wages paid in the state for work of like or comparable character by employers who voluntarily maintain minimum fair wage standards.” § 561 (8).

If the commissioner accepts the report, he shall publish it and a public hearing must be held. § 556. If after the hearing he approves the report, he “shall make a directory order which shall define minimum, fair wage rates.” § 557. Upon hearing and finding of disobedience the commissioner may publish the name of an employer as having failed to observe the directory order. § 559. If, after a directory order has been, in effect for nine months, the commissioner is of opinion that persistent non-observance is a threat to the maintenance of the prescribed standards, he may after hearing make the order mandatory. § 560. Violation of a mandatory order is a misdemeanor punishable by fine, imprisonment or both. § 565 (2).

Thus it appears; The minimum wage provided for in the District Act was one not less than adequate “to supply the necessary cost of living to any such women workers to maintain them in good health and to protect their morals.” The New York Act defines an oppressive and unreasonable wage as containing two elements. The one first mentioned is: “less than the fair and reasonable value of the services rendered.” The other is: “less than sufficient to meet the minimum cost of living necessary for health.” The basis last mentioned is not to be distinguished from the living wage defined in the District act. The exertion of the granted power to prescribe minimum wages is by, the State act conditioned upon a finding by the commissioner or other administrative agency that a substantial number of women in any occupation are receiving wages that are oppressive and unreasonable, i. e., less than value of the service and less than a living wage. That finding is essential to jurisdiction of the commissioner. In the state court there was controversy between the parties as to whether the “minimum fair wage rates” are required to be established solely upon value of service or upon that value and the living wage. Against the contention of the attorney general, the Court of Appeals held that the minimum wage must be based on both elements.

Speaking through its chief judge, that court said: “We find no material difference between the act of Congress and this act of the New York State Legislature. The act of Congress, it is said, was to protect women from conditions resulting from wages which were inadequate to maintain decent standards of living.” The opinion then quotes from the brief of the attorney general: “'The purpose of the statute in the Adkins case was to guarantee a wage based solely upon the necessities of the workers. The statute did not provide for the wages to have any relationship to earning power; was applicable to all vocations and not to the character of the work ... As contrasted with this statute, the New York Minimum Wage Law provides a definite standard for- wages paid. It provides that the worker is to be paid at least the value of the services rendered.’ ” The opinion continues: “This is a difference in phraseology and not in principle. The New York act, as above stated, prohibits an oppressive and unreasonable wage, which means both less than the fair and reasonable value of the services rendered and less than sufficient to meet the minimum cost of living necessary for health. The act of Congress had one standard, the living wage; this State act has added another, reasonable value. The minimum wage must include both. What was vague before has not been made any clearer. One of the elements, therefore, in fixing the fair wage is the very matter which was the basis of the congressional act. Forcing the payment of wages, at a reasonable value does not make inapplicable the principle and ruling of the Adkins case. The distinctions between this case and the Adkins case are differences in details, methods and time; the exercise of legislative power to fix wages in any employment is the same.” •

The petitioner does not suggest and reasonably it cannot be thought that, so far as concerns repugnancy to the due process clause, there is any difference between the minimum wage law for the District of Columbia and the clause of the New York Act, “less than sufficient to meet the minimum cost of living necessary for health.” Petitioner does not claim that element was validated by including with it the other ingredient, “less than the fair and reasonable value of the services rendered.”

His brief repeats the state court’s declaration: “‘The .act of Congress had one standard, the living wage; this State act has added another, reasonable value. The minimum wage must include both. What was vague before has not been made any clearer. One of the elements, therefore, in fixing the fair wage is the very matter which was the basis of the congressional act.’ ” Then he says: “The italicized lines carry the Court’s misconception of the statute. It is a basic misconception. From it flows the erroneous conclusion of the Court of Appeals that there exists no material difference between the two statutes . . . Those.two factors do not enter into the determination of the minimum ‘fair wage’ as in the statute defined, nor as determined in this case. The only basis for evaluating and arriving at the ‘fair minimum wage” is the fair value of the services rendered.”

There is no blinking the fact that the state court construed the prescribed standard to include cost of living or that petitioner here refuses to accept that construction. Petitioner’s contention that the Court of Appeals misconstrued the Act cannot be entertained. This court is without power to put a different construction upon the state enactment from that adopted by the highest court of the State. We are not at liberty to consider petitioner’s argument based on the construction repudiated by that court. The meaning of the statute as fixed by its decision must be accepted here as if the meaning had been specifically expressed in the enactment. Knights of Pythias v. Meyer, 265 U. S. 30, 32. Exclusive authority to enact carries with it final authority to say what the measure means. Jones v. Prairie Oil Co., 273 U. S. 195, 200. The standard of “minimum fair wage rates” for women workers to be prescribed must be considered as if both elements—value of service and living wage—were embodied in the statutory definition itself. International Harvester Co. v. Kentucky, 234 U. S. 216, 220. As our construction of an Act of Congress must be deemed by state courts to be the law of the United States, so this New York Act as construed by her court of last resort, must here be taken to express the intention and purpose of her lawmakers. Green v. Neal’s Lessee, 6 Pet. 291, 295-298.

The state court rightly held that the Adkins case controls this one and requires that relator be discharged upon the ground that the legislation under which he was indicted and imprisoned is repugnant to the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment;

The general statement in the New York Act of the fields of labor it includes, taken in connection with the work not covered, indicates legislative intention to reach nearly all private employers of women. The Act . does not extend to men. It does extend to boys and girls under the age of 21 years but there is here involved no question as to its validity in respect of wages to be prescribed for them. Relator’s petition for the writ shows that the charge against him is that as manager of a laundry he “disobeyed a mandatory order prescribing certain minimum wages for certain adult women employees of the said laundry.” The rights of. no other class of workers are here involved.

Upon the face of the act the question arises whether the State may impose upon the employers state-made minimum wage rates for all competent experienced women workers whom they may have in their service. That question involves another one. It is:' Whether the State has power similarly to.subject to state-made wages all adult women employed in trade, industry or business, other, than house and farm work. These were the questions decided in the Adkins case. So far at least as concerns the validity of the enactment under consideration, the restraint imposed by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment upon legislative power of the State is the same as that imposed by the corresponding provision of the Fifth Amendment upon the legislative power of the United States.

This court’s opinion shows (pp. 545, 546): The right to make contracts about one’s affairs is a part of the liberty protected by the due process clause. Within this liberty are provisions of contracts between employer and employee fixing the wages to be paid. In making contracts of employment, generally speaking, the parties have equal right to obtain from each other the best terms they can by private bargaining. Legislative abridgement of that freedom can only be justified by the existence of exceptional circumstances. Freedom of contract is the general rule and restraint the exception. This court has found not repugnant to the due process clause statutes fixing rates and charges to be exacted by businesses impressed with a public interest, relating to contracts for the performance of public work, prescribing the character, methods and time of payment of wages, fixing hours of labor. Physical differences between men and women must be recognized in proper cases and legislation fixing hours- or conditions of work may properly take them' into account, but (p. 553) “we cannot accept the doctrine that women of mature age, sui juris, require or may be subjected to restrictions upon their liberty of contract which could not lawfully be imposed in the casé of men under similar circumstances. To do so would-be to.ignore all the implications to be drawn from the present day trend of legislation, 'as well as that of common thought and usage, by which woman is accorded emancipation from the old doctrine that she must be given special protection or be subjected to special restraint in her contractual and civil relationships. . . „ [p. 554] Enough has been said to show that the authority to fix hours of labor cannot be exercised except in respect of those occupations where work of long continued duration is detrimental to health. This Court has been careful in every case where the question has been raised, to place its decision upon this limited authority of the legislature to regulate hours of labor and to disclaim any purpose to uphold the legislation as fixing wages, thus recognizing an' essential difference between the two. It seems plain that these decisions afford no real support for any form of law establishing minimum wages.”

The decision and the reasoning upon- which it rests clearly show that the State is without power by any form of legislation to prohibit, change or nullify contracts between employers and adult women workers as to the amount of wages to be paid.

Then, the opinion emphasizes objections specifically applicable to the requirement that the minimum wages to be prescribed under the District Act shall be adequate “to-supply the necessary cost of living to any such women workers to maintain them in good health and to protect their morals.” Some of them were: The price fixed by the board need have no'relation to earning powers, hours or place or character of work; it is based wholly on opinion of the board as to what amount will be necessary to comply with the standard; it applies to every occupation without regard to the kind of work; the standard is so vague as to be impossible of practical application; the Act takes account of the necessities of only the employee; to the extent that the sum fixed exceeds fair value of service rendered, it amounts to a compulsory exaction for the support of a partially indigent person for whose condition there rests upon the employer no peculiar responsibility; the statute exacts from the employer an arbitrary payment for a purpose and upon a basis having no causal connection with his business or the contract or the work the employee engages to do; the declared basis is not the value of the service rendered but the extraneous circumstance that the employee needs to get a prescribed sum of money to insure her subsistence, health and morals. The court said (p. 558): “The ethical right of every worker, man or woman, to a living wage may be conceded. . . . The fallacy of the proposed method of attaining it is that it assumes that every employer is bound at all events to furnish it. The moral requirement, implicit in every contract of employment, viz., that the amount to be paid and the service to be rendered shall bear to each other some relation of just equivalence, is completely ignored. The necessities of the employee are alone considered and these arise outside of the employment and are as great in one occupation as in another.”

Illustrating particular constitutional difficulties encountered by the enactment then before us, the opinion proceeds (p. 559): “Should a statute undertake to vest in a commission power to determine the quantity of food necessary, for individual support and require .the shopkeeper,- if he sell to the individual at all, to furnish that quantity at not more than a fixed maximum, it would undoubtedly fall before the constitutional test. The fállacy, of any argument in support of the validity of such a statute, would be quickly exposed. The argument in support of that now being considered is equally fallacious, though the weakness of it may not be so plain. A statute requiring an employer to pay in money, to pay at prescribed and regular intervals, to pay th¿'value of the services rendered, even to pay with, fair relation to the extent of the benefit obtained from the service, would be understandable. But a statute which prescribes payment without regard to any of these things, and solely with relation to circumstances apart from the contract of employment, the business.affected by it and the work done under it, is so clearly the product of a naked, arbitrary exercise of power that it cannot be allowed to stand under the Constitution of the United States.”

Petitioner does not attempt to support the Act as construed by the state court. His claim is that it is to be tested here as if it did not include the cost of living and as if value of service were the sole standard. Plainly that position is untenable. If the State has power to single out for regulation the amount of wages to be paid women, the value of their services would be a material consideration. - But that fact has no relevancy upon the question whether the State has any such power. And utterly without significance upon the question of power is the suggestion that the New York prescribed standard' includes value of service with cost of living whereas the District of Columbia standard was based upon the latter alone. As shown above, the dominant issue in the Adkins case was whether Congress had power to establish minimum wages for adult women workers in the District of Columbia. The opinion directly answers in the negative. The ruling that defects in the prescribed standard stamped that Act as arbitrary and invalid was an -additional ground of subordinate consequence.

The dissenting opinion of Mr. Chief Justice Taft (in which Mr. Justice Sanford concurred) assumes (p. 564) “that the conclusion in this [Adkins] case rests on the distinction between a minimum of wages and a maximum of hours.” That is the only point he discussed; he did not refer to the validity of the standard prescribed by the Act. The dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Holmes begins (p. 567): “The question in this case is the broad one, Whether Congress can establish minimum rates of wages for women in the District of Columbia with due provision for special circumstances, or whether we must-say that Congress has no power to meddle with the matter at all.” And, after assuming that women would not be employed at the wages fixed unless they were earned or unless the employer could pay them, the opinion says (p. 570): “But the ground on- which the law is held to fail is fundamental and therefore it is unnecessary to consider matters of detail.” If the decision of the court turned upon the question of the validity of the particular standard, that question could not have been ignored by the justices who were in favor of upholding the Act. Clearly they understood—and rightly—that, by the opinion of the court, it was held that Congress was without power to deal with the subject- at all.

To distinguish this from the Adkins case, petitioner refers to changes in conditions that have come since that decision, cites great increase during recent years in the number of women wage earners and invokes the first section of the Act, called “Factual background.”

The Act is not to meet an emergency; it discloses a permanent policy; the increasing number of women workers suggests that more and, more they are getting and holding jobs that otherwise would belong to men. The “Factual background” must be read in the light of the circumstances attending its enactment. The New York legislature passed two minimum wage measures and contemporaneously submitted them to the governor. One was approved; it is the Act now before us. The other was vetoed and did not~T5ecome law. They contained the same definitions of oppressive wage and fair wage and in general provided the same machinery and procedure culminating in fixing minimum wages by directory orders. The one vetoed was for an emergency; it extended to men as well as to women employees; it did not provide for the enforcement of wages by mandatory orders.

It is significant that their “factual backgrounds” are much alike. They are indicated in the margin.² These legislative declarations, in form of findings or recitals of fact, serve well to illustrate why any measure that deprives employers and adult women of freedom to agree upon wages, leaving employers and men employees free so to do, is necessarily arbitrary.. Much, if not all, that in them is said in justification of the regulations that the Act imposes in respect, of women’s wages applies with equal force in support of the same regulation of men’s, wages. While men are left free to fix their wages by agreement with employers, it would be fanciful to suppose that the regulation of women’s wages would be useful to prevent or lessen the evils listed in the first section of the Act. Men in need of work are as likely as women to accept the low wages offered by unscrupulous em-' ployers. Men in greater number than women support themselves and dependents and because of need will work for whatever wages they can get and that without regard to the value of the service and even though the pay is less than minima prescribed in accordance with this Act. It is plain that, under circumstances such as those portrayéd in the “Factual background,” prescribing of minimum wages for women alone would unreasonably restrain them in competition with men and tend arbitrarily to deprive them of emplbyment and a fair chance to find. work.

This court, on the authority of the Adkins case and with the acquiescence of all the justices who dissented from the decision,³ held repugnant to the diie process clause' of the Fourteenth Amendment statutes of Arizona and Arkansas,⁴ respectively, fixing minimum wages for women. Murphy v. Sardell, 269 U. S. 530. Donham v. West-Nelson Mfg. Co., 273 U. S. 657. We have adhered to the principle there applied and cited it as a guide in other,cases. Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390, 399. Wolff Packing Co. v. Industrial Court, 262 U. S. 522, 534. Ribnik v. McBride, 277 U. S. 350, 356. See Near v. Minnesota, 283 U. S. 697, 707-708. States having similar enactments have construed it to prevent the fixing of wages for adult women. Topeka Laundry Co. v. Court of In dustrial Relations, 119 Kan. 12; 237 Pac. 1041. Stevenson v. St Clair, 161 Minn. 444; 201 N. W. 629. See-Folding Furniture Works v. Industrial Commission, 300 Fed. 991. People v. Successors of Laurnaga & Co., 32 P. R. 766.

The New York court’s decision conforms to ours in the Adkins case, and the later rulings that we have made on the authority of that case. That decision was deliberately made upon careful consideration of the oral arguments and briefs of the respective parties and also of briefs submitted on behalf of States and others as amici curiae. In the. Arizona case the attorney general sought to distinguish the District of Columbia Act from the legislation then before us and insisted that the latter was a valid exertion of the police power of the State. Counsel for the California commission submitted a brief amicus curiae in which he elaborately argued that our decision in the Adkins case was erroneous and ought to be overruled. In the Arkansas case the state officers, appellants there, by painstaking and thorough brief presented arguments in favor of the same contention. But this court, after thoughtful attention to all that was suggested against that decision, adhered to it as sound. And in •each case, being clearly of opinion that no discussion was required to show that, having regard to the principles applied in the Adkins case, the state legislation fixing wages for women was repugnant to the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, we so held and upon the authority of that case affirmed per curiam the decree enjoining its enforcement. It is equally plain that the judgment in the case now before us must also be

Affirmed.

1 Briefs of amici curiae in support of the application were filed by the City of New York and the State of Illinois. Briefs on the merits supporting the New York Act, were filed by the State of Ohio, and by the States of Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Rhode Island. Briefs for affirmance were filed by thé New York State Hotel Association, National Woman’s Party, National Association of Women Lawyers, et al.

2 Omitting the words in brackets, the' following is the factual background in the first section of the Act before us. Adding the words in brackets and omitting those in italics, there is indicated the background in the bill that was not approved.

“The employment of [men and] women and minors in trade and industry in the state of New York at wages unreasonably low and not fairly commensurate with the value of the services rendered is a matter of grays und vital public concern. Many [men and] women and minors employed for gain in the state of New York are not as a class upon a level of equality in bargaining with their employers in regard to minimum fair wage standards, and 'freedom of contract’ as applied to their relations with their employers is illusory. Since a very large percentage of such workers are obliged from their week to week wages to support themselves and others who are dependent upon them in whole or in part, they are, by reason of their necessitous circumstances, forced to accept whatever wages are offerd to them. Judged by any reasonable standard, wages are in many cases fixed by chance and caprice and the wages accepted are often found to bear no relation to the fair value of the service rendered. Women and minors employed for gain are peculiarly subject to the overreaching of inefficient, harsh or ignorant employers and under unregulated competition where no adequate machinery exists for the effective regulation and maintenance of minimum fair wage standards, [and] Ahe standards suck as exist tend to be set by the least conscionable employers. In the absence of any effective minimum fair wage rates, for women and minors, the constant lowering of wages by unscrupulous employers constitutes a serious form of unfair competition against other employers, reduces the purchasing power of the workers [a large proportion of the population of the state] and threatens the stability of industry. The evils, of oppressive, unreasonable and unfair wages as they affect women and minors employed in the state of New York are such as to render imperative the exercise of the police.power of'the-state for the-protection of industry and of the [men and] women and minors employed therein and of the public interest of the community at large in their health and well-being and in the prevention of the deterioration of the race. In the considered judgment of the legislature this article is constitutional.”

3 Mr. Justice Brandéis took no part in the consideration of the Adkins case. He noted dissent without more in the Arizona case and Arkansas case.

4 The Arizona Act declared: “No person . . . shall employ any female in any store, office,.shop, restaurant, dining room, hotel, rooming house, laundry or manufacturing establishment at a weekly wage of less than Sixteen Dollars ($16.00) per week; a lesser amount being hereby declared inadequate to supply the necessary cost .of living to any such female, to maintain her health, and to provide her with the common necessaries of life.” Laws of Arizona, 1923, c. 3, § 1.

• The Arkansas Act declared: “It shall be unlawful, for any employer ... to pay any female worker in any. establishment or occupation less than the. wage specified in this section, to-wit, except as hereinafter provided: “All female workers who have had six months’ practicable experience in any line of industry or labor shall be paid not less than one dollar and twenty-five cents per. day. The minimum wage for inexperienced female workers who have not had six months experience, in any line of industry or labor shall be paid not less than one dollar, per day.” § 7108, Crawford & Moses Digest. .