William Leuchtenburg and Barry Cushman

Analysis of West Coast Hotel v Parrish Case

West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 1937, signaled the end of the Lochner-era laissez-faire dominance over Supreme Court jurisprudence. The Court overturned a fourteen-year-old precedent and held that states were constitutionally permitted to establish a minimum wage for women. The decision is widely seen as a capitulation to Roosevelt threatened court-packing scheme, but its precedential role in changing the Court attitude towards economic legislation is nonetheless undisputed. The Court believed that this subject should receive “fresh consideration” from previous decisions (Constitutional Change and the New Deal: The Internalist/Externalist Debate).

The Constitution doesn't mention a freedom of contract, but talks about liberty and requires due process of law for any such deprivation. Liberty is not absolute or uncontrollable, but may be regulated to protect against harms to public health, morals, safety, and welfare. The Adkins decision was an improper application of the principles governing state regulation of employment (Adam, pp. 3). The Legislature is entitled to enact laws to reduce the exploitation of workers in the form of wages insufficient to live on. Legislative response to exploitation is not arbitrary, and that is all this court must determine. Although the policy is debatable and its effects uncertain, the judgment of the Legislature can not be disputed. What these workers are not, the company pays for the cost of bare life can be satisfied. The community is not obligated to provide what is in effect a subsidy for unscrupulous employers, the Legislature thereof may direct to remedy this abuse. Exploitation of workers is also provided a direct charge to the community for their support. Taxpayers are required to pay additional wages to workers to enable them to cover the cost of bare life. The Court reversed Adkins stating that "it was a departure from the actual application of the principles governing state regulation of employer and employee."

The ghost of Elsie Parrish walks among us yet. It was 75 years ago the hardworking chambermaid at Wenatchee's Cascadian Hotel had a gripe — she wanted the state's minimum wage for women of $14.50 a week. Her boss refused. She sued, and her case led to the United States Supreme Court and one of the most significant precedents in the history of American jurisprudence. Elsie Parrish and her fight for 30 cents and hour ended an era in which Congress and states often were forbidden to interfere with American business and intervene in the relationship between employer and employee. Elsie Parrish and her case laid the legal foundation for the New Deal and government's intervention in commerce, ever since. Elsie Parrish stood at the beginning of an era in which government regulation met with fewer and fewer restraints.

The Parrish era began in the dirtied rooms of the building I can see out my window, just a block away. It may end in the chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States as it decides the fate of the Affordable Health Care Act. Should all ...