On February 24, 1908, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Muller v. Oregon, upholding an Oregon law that regulated the employment of women. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, political progressives pursued economic and political reforms. Many pushed hard to improve working conditions for men, women, and children laboring in shops and factories. The women’s movement was pressing for the right to vote and the right to exercise autonomy in legal and economic affairs. In 1908, in Muller v. Oregon, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case challenging a state law that regulated the employment of women. The Court’s decision gave rise to many questions about the progressive agenda and how its goals might be best achieved.

The case arose when the owner of a laundry in Portland, Oregon, violated a state law limiting the number of hours a woman could work in his shop. The man challenged the constitutionality of this protective legislation; the direction the Supreme Court was taking in cases of this sort at the time portended a victory for the laundry owner. However, the Court, presented with a mountain of evidence demonstrating the danger to women workers of industrial practices left unregulated, unanimously upheld Oregon’s law. This victory for progressives supporting worker protections thus came at a cost, as the Court’s decision upholding protective legislation undermined women’s rights.

The Court cabined, or kept narrow, its holding in Muller, but the long-term impacts of the decision were profound and far reaching. These effects traveled in two distinct directions. Along one path, Muller legitimated consideration by the Supreme Court of real-world conditions, as demonstrated in facts supplied by experts and scientists, when giving shape to the law. Along another path, Muller legitimated a view of women that supported sex discrimination, thus blocking or hindering the campaign for gender equality far into the twentieth century. Predictably, the persuasive power of the Brandeis brief in Muller generated reliance on the same strategy in later cases. In state and federal courts alike, lawyers defending protective restrictions on economic activity compiled studies and statistics to bolster their cases.

Related posts: Jonathan Rees on the Brandeis Brief

Read the full text of Muller v. Oregon

View a time line of related events surrounding the case

For immediate download: expert analysis of Muller v. Oregon by Randy Wagner