Muller v. Oregon

The Court upheld a ten-hour workday law for women, accepting social science evidence of harm as a reasonable basis for regulation.

Overview

Oregon convicted a laundry owner of employing a woman more than ten hours in a day. Louis Brandeis, later a justice, filed a famous brief that devoted barely two pages to legal argument and over one hundred pages to social science data on industrial conditions for women. Justice Brewer wrote for a unanimous Court upholding the law, distinguishing Lochner by pointing to women's physical structure, maternal functions, and dependence. Muller legitimized the Brandeis brief as advocacy grounded in facts and data, opening a path for sustaining progressive labor and welfare legislation.