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Economic Regulation & Property
Muller v. Oregon
Decided: 1908
In brief
Upheld maximum-hour laws for women workers, a partial retreat from Lochner-era reasoning.
The Court's ruling in depth
The Court upheld Oregon's 10-hour workday limit for women in laundries, persuaded by Louis Brandeis's famous 'Brandeis brief' of sociological data (albeit invoking now-discredited paternalistic views of women's differential needs). Muller cracked Lochner's edifice and pioneered the use of empirical evidence in constitutional argument.