The case of Lochner v. New York is widely considered a landmark in Supreme Court history, one which kicked off an era of aggressive adherence to business interest protections and wealth accumulation during the Gilded Age of the robberbaron. This case kicked off the so-called Lochner or Lochnerian Era, which lasted about 30 years until the political atmosphere of the Great Depression prompted the court to reverse its stance on labor protections in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, a detour that SCOTUS has stuck with in all proceeding rulings to this day — but the truth of the modern labor law landscape is not as black and white.
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with many working over 100 hours a week
Opponents of laws like the Bakehouse Act
Lochner’s team
argued
a rallying cry for the Progressive movement
professor of law at the University of Chicago
Adkins v. Children’s Hospital of D.C.
ruled in favor of the hospital
Columbia Undergraduate Law Review
West Coast Hotel Company v. Parrish
a plan to expand and pack the court
economic due process, that business owners were protected by the Fourteenth Amendment
Equal Protection Rights under the Fourteenth Amendment
Hariharan in the Columbia Undergraduate Law Review
disregard the imbalance of bargaining power
laid out in the Economic Policy Institute
as detailed here by the Illinois Law Review
Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc.
Vance v. Ball State University
Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31
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