Walker v. Chapman

17 F. Supp. 308, 7 Ohio Op. 116, 1936 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1773
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. Ohio
DecidedNovember 20, 1936
DocketNo. 1170
StatusPublished

This text of 17 F. Supp. 308 (Walker v. Chapman) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. Ohio primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Walker v. Chapman, 17 F. Supp. 308, 7 Ohio Op. 116, 1936 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1773 (S.D. Ohio 1936).

Opinion

PER CURIAM.

On the 14th day of January, 1936, complaint herein filed her bill of complaint, wherein she challenges the constitutionality of the Ohio Minimum Wage Law (Gen. Code, §§ 154-45d to 154-45t), alleging that “the Ohio minimum wage'law and the provisions of the Ohio Constitution authorizing the Ohio Legislature to pass minimum wage laws, are void and of no effect because they are repugnant to and in-violation of the Constitution of the United States in that they deprive the complainant of the liberty of contract guaranteed to her by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, and because they deny to the complainant the equal protection of the law and because they deprive the complainant of her liberty and her property without due or any process of law.” She seeks to enjoin defendants from enforcing the law.

On June 8, 1936, defendants filed a motion to dismiss the bill of complaint upon the grounds set forth in the motion.

Upon a consideration of that motion, the court is of the opinion it is not well taken and that it should be, and it is overruled.

On March 6, 1936, a joint answer of all the defendants was filed. Defendants deny that the law is unconstitutional; that it is unreasonable and prejudicial to women workers; that it imposes unreasonable restrictions upon the right of complainant to contract for her services in violation of the rights and privileges guaranteed to her under the Constitution of the United States or any amendment thereto; and deny that complainant will be irreparably injured by reason of the enforcement of the provisions of the law m question. Defendants pray that an interlocutory injunction may be denied and the bill dismissed.

The issue presented, in its broad aspect, is not new. The only question involved is whether the law under consideration in the instant case can be distinguished from the respective acts considered in cases heretofore decided by the Supreme Court of the United States.

In the case of Adkins v. Children’s Hospital, 261 U.S. 525, 43 S.Ct. 394, 67 L.Ed. 785, 24 A.L.R. 1238, the Supreme Court had before it the question as to the constitutionality of the Act of September 19, 1918, 40 Stat. 960, providing for the fixing of minimum wages for women and children in the District of Columbia. The lower courts had held that the act there in question was unconstitutional, and their decrees were affirmed by the Supreme Court.

If the act here in question comes within the decision in the Adkins Case, this' court has no alternative but to declare the act unconstitutional.

We think that the Ohio act is so distinguishable from the act under consideration in the Adkins Case as to remove it from that ban. Nor is our view altered by the decision in Morehead v. People ex rel. Tipaldo, 298 U.S. 587, 56 S.Ct. 918, 920, 80 L.Ed. 1347, 103 A.L.R. 1445, decided by the Supreme Court June 1, 1936. On the contrary, the decision in the More-head Case strengthens our view.

In the Adkins Case (261 U.S. 525, at p. 555, 43 S.Ct. 394, 400, 67 L.Ed. 785, 24 A.L.R. 1238) the Supreme Court pointed out that: “The standard furnished by the statute [there under consideration] for the guidance of the board is so vague as to be impossible of practical application with any reasonable degree of accuracy. What is sufficient to supply the necessary cost of living for a woman worker and maintain her in good health and protect her morals is obviously not a precise or unvarying sum—not even approximately so. The amount will depend upon a variety of circumstances: The individual temperament, habits of thrift, care, ability to buy necessaries intelligently, and whether the woman lives alone or with her family.” Again (261 U.S. 525, at page 558, 43 S.Ct. 394, 401, 67 L.Ed. 785, 24 A.L.R. 1238) : “The feature of this statute, which perhaps more than any other, puts upon it the stamp of invalidity, is that it exacts [310]*310from 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, as already pointed out, 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 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.” And again (261 U.S. 525, at page 559, 43 S.Ct. 394, 402, 67 L.Ed. 785, 24 A.L.R. 1238) : “A statute requiring an employer to pay in money, to pay at prescribed and regular intervals, to pay the 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, * * * 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.”

The Ohio statutes here in question are sections 154-45d to 154-45t, G.C.O. The definitions to be applied to the terms used in the act are set forth in section 154-45d, paragraph 8 whereof reads as follows:

“8. 'A fair wage’ shall mean a wage fairly and reasonably commensurate with the value of the service or class of service rendered. In establishing a minimum fair wage for any service or class of service under this article, the director, superintendent or 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 (3) may consider the wages paid in the state for work of like or comparable character by employers who voluntarily maintain minimum fair wage standards.”

As above indicated, under the Ohio law, the minimum fair wage to be fixed “shall mean a wage fairly and reasonably commensurate with the value of the service or class of service rendered.” Thus the standard fixed by the Ohio minimum wage statute is not uncertain as was the legislative standard passed on in the Adkins Case. It cannot be said, as in the Adkins Case, that the standard furnished for the guidance of the board is so vague as to be impossible of. practical application, for the reason that the standard set under the Ohio act can be fixed upon a basis of reasonableness. 'It is capable of a reasonably definite and accurate application. The Supreme Court did not condemn the purpose of minimum wage legislation in the Adkins Case; it condemned the method of setting such a wage embodied in the legislation enacted by Congress in the District of Columbia.

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Related

Green v. Lessee of Neal
31 U.S. 291 (Supreme Court, 1832)
International Harvester Co. of America v. Kentucky
234 U.S. 216 (Supreme Court, 1914)
Adkins v. Children's Hospital of Columbia
261 U.S. 525 (Supreme Court, 1923)
Supreme Lodge, Knights of Pythias v. Meyer
265 U.S. 30 (Supreme Court, 1924)
Jones v. Prairie Oil & Gas Co.
273 U.S. 195 (Supreme Court, 1927)
Morehead v. New York Ex Rel. Tipaldo
298 U.S. 587 (Supreme Court, 1936)
People Ex Rel. Tipaldo v. Morehead
200 N.E. 799 (New York Court of Appeals, 1936)

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Bluebook (online)
17 F. Supp. 308, 7 Ohio Op. 116, 1936 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1773, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/walker-v-chapman-ohsd-1936.