Bunting v. Oregon

Bunting v. Oregon
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 18, 1916 Reargued January 19, 1917 Decided April 9, 1917
Full case name	Franklin O. Bunting, Plaintiff in Error v. The State of Oregon
Citations	243 U.S. 426 (more) 37 S. Ct. 435; 61 L. Ed. 830; 1917 U.S. LEXIS 2008
Prior history	71 Or. 259 (1914)
Holding
The court affirmed the decision of the Oregon Supreme Court upholding the state law as constitutional.
Court membership
Chief Justice Edward D. White Associate Justices Joseph McKenna · Oliver W. Holmes, Jr. William R. Day · Willis Van Devanter Mahlon Pitney · James C. McReynolds Louis Brandeis · John H. Clarke
Case opinions
Majority	McKenna, joined by Holmes, Day, Pitney, Clarke
Dissent	White
Dissent	Van Devanter
Dissent	McReynolds
Brandeis took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

Bunting v. Oregon, 243 U.S. 426 (1917), is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States upheld a ten-hour work day. The trials of Bunting v. Oregon resulted in acceptance of a ten-hour workday for both men and women, but the state minimum-wage laws were not changed until twenty years later. Future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter along with future Oregon Supreme Court justices George M. Brown and John O. Bailey represented Oregon on the appeal while W. Lair Thompson and former Senator for Oregon Charles W. Fulton represented Bunting.

Background

A 1913 state law prescribed a 10-hour day for men and women, expanding the law regulating women's hours ago that had been upheld in Muller v. Oregon. The measure also required businesses to pay time-and-a-half wages for overtime up to 3 hours a day. Oregon asserted that the law was an appropriate exercise of its police powers. Bunting failed to comply with the stateovertime regulations. This question was brought before the court:

Does the state measure, limiting a work day to ten hours and requiring overtime, interfere with a citizens right to form a contract, protected by the Fourteenth Amendment?

Decision

The Court upheld the decision of the Oregon Supreme Court, finding that the state acted within the scope of its police powers and had the authority to regulate the health, safety, and welfare of workers within Oregon. Relying on the justifications made by the Oregon court and legislature, Justice McKenna dismissed Bunting's contention that the law did nothing to preserve the health of employees. The Court found that the law did not provide an unfair advantage to certain types of employers in the labor market since it regulated the hours of service for workers, not the wages that they earned. Under the Oregon statute, workers and their employers were still free to implement a wage scheme agreeable to both of them.

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 243