4 - Muller v.|Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908)

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Allowing the State of Oregon to enact workplace legislation protecting only women, the U.S. Supreme Court in Muller v. Oregon accepted women's greater need for protection as a fact established by social science research. Muller is important to the history and theory of feminism for two reasons. First, it is known for the Brandeis brief filed on behalf of the State of Oregon by then-attorney and later U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. A Brandeis brief emphasizes social science research to bolster the factual argument made in support of the legal analysis. While it is common today to make policy arguments based on non-legal research or to provide expert analysis of surrounding facts, it was not nearly so common before Muller.

Second was Muller's acceptance of the state's argument that it could use its police powers to create protectionist laws for women based on the facts of women's weaker nature and man's historical domination and role as protector of women. The feminist dissent by Professor Pamela Laufer-Ukeles, writing as Justice Laufer-Ukeles, points out that protecting workers based on sweeping generalizations cannot be justified at the expense of equality for women.

THE ORIGINAL OPINION

In Muller, a laundry owner was fined for violating an Oregon law limiting the number of hours women could work in factories or laundries to ten hours per day. Oregon justified the use of its police power on the basis that working long hours in laundries was bad for women's health, safety, and morals. Oregon's brief spent just a few of its more than 100 pages discussing the law; the rest of the brief presented research and quotes from a wide variety of experts on the impact of long hours of factory work on women, especially its effects on their ability to bear and raise children and care for their families.

The brief cited and quoted numerous reports and statements from around the world. For example, one report entitled the Specific Evil Effects on Childbirth and Female Functions found that “[t]he evil effect of overwork before as well as after marriage upon childbirth is marked and disastrous.” The brief asserted that shorter hours were the only possible protection against such harms because “[a] decrease in the intensity of exertion is not feasible.”