West Coast Hotel Co. v.

Parrish
300 US 379 (1937)
FACTS: Elsie Parrish, an employee of the West Coast Hotel Company, received sub-minimum wage
compensation for her work. Parrish brought suit to recover the difference between the wages paid to her
and the minimum wage fixed by Washington State law. (The statute was essentially similar to the one
challenged in the Adkins case.)
ISSUE: Did the minimum wage law violate the liberty to contract as construed under the Fifth
Amendment as applied by the Fourteenth Amendment?
HELD: The establishment of minimum wages for women was constitutionally legitimate (being a
reasonable exercise of police power).
RATIO/REASONING:
The Constitution does not speak of freedom of contract. It speaks of liberty and prohibits the deprivation
of liberty without due process of law. But the liberty safeguarded is one that requires the protection of the
law against the evils which menace the health, safety, morals, and welfare of the people. Thus liberty is
necessarily subject to the restraints of due process or reasonable regulation, the freedom to contract in
particular.
A long line of decisions illustrates the power under the Constitution to restrict the freedom of contract. It
may be exercised in the name of the public interest with respect to contracts between employers and
employees. Employees were often constrained by practical and economic realities. That parties are full of
age and competent to contract, does not necessarily deprive the state of the power to interfere, where the
parties do not stand upon an equality or where the public welfare demands that one party shall be
protected, even from himself.
This principle is particularly applicable in the light of the need of protecting women against oppression
despite her possession of contractual rights. This protection is not only solely for womens benefit but for
the benefit of all. The exploitation of a class of workers is not only detrimental to their well-being but
casts a direct burden for their support upon the community. What these workers lose in wages the
taxpayers are called upon to pay. The community is not bound to provide what is in effect a subsidy for
unconscionable employers. (The decision goes on to quote the dissenting opinions in Adkins. See the
digest.)
This case overruled the ruling in Adkins and upheld that the protection of women is a legitimate end of
the exercise of police power. Moreover, the legislature, having considered the situation of women, had the
right to carry out minimum wage legislation as part of their policy of protection.
That the legislation is not extended to men does not make it arbitrary. The legislature is free to recognize
degrees of harm and may confine restrictions to cases where such harm is most evident (no doctrinaire
requirement)
Justices Sutherland, Van Devanter, McReynolds, and Butler, dissenting.
The Adkins case was properly decided. (See reasoning in Adkins case.) Reiterated that women of the time
stand upon a legal and political equality with men. There was no need to put them in separate classes with
respect to their right to make contracts. For the ability to make a fair bargain does not depend upon sex.
Fixing a minimum connotes the possibility of fixing a maximum in which case the freedom to contract
would have been completely abrogated.