Adkins v. Children’s Hospital: Ruling, Dissent, and Overruling

Adkins v. Children’s Hospital was a 1923 Supreme Court decision that struck down a federal minimum wage law for women and minors working in the District of Columbia. The Court held, 5-3, that the law violated the liberty of contract protected by the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The ruling stood for fourteen years before being overruled in 1937.

The Law at the Center of the Case

In 1918, Congress passed the District of Columbia Minimum Wage Act to protect the health and morals of female and minor workers. The statute aimed to guarantee wages sufficient to cover the cost of living and maintain a decent standard of health.¹

The Act created a three-member Minimum Wage Board with authority to investigate pay in different occupations and to issue binding wage orders. Employers who ignored those orders faced misdemeanor charges. The effect was a legal floor on pay for women and children in the District that no private agreement could go below.¹

The Constitutional Challenge

Children’s Hospital and other employers challenged the Act on the theory that it violated the liberty of contract, a right the Court had located in the Due Process Clause. Because the law was an act of Congress governing the District of Columbia, the Fifth Amendment applied.¹

The argument was that adults capable of making their own decisions should be free to agree on wages without government dictation, and that a mandatory floor infringed the personal freedom of both employer and employee.¹

How the Court Ruled

Justice George Sutherland wrote for the majority. He held that the Act placed an unfair burden on employers because the wage set by the board bore no required relationship to the market value of the work or the earning power of the employee. An employer could be compelled to pay an amount pegged to a worker’s needs rather than to the value of the labor performed.¹

Sutherland also pointed to the Nineteenth Amendment. With women having gained the vote and greater civil equality, the majority reasoned that special wage protections singling women out were no longer justified. Adult women, the Court said, were capable of negotiating their own contracts on the same footing as men.¹

The opinion reaffirmed that liberty of contract was the general rule and government interference the exception. Congress, the Court concluded, could not require pay tied to an employee’s needs without regard to the value of the labor.¹

Justice Holmes’s Dissent

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes disagreed. He argued that freedom of contract is not absolute and is not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, and that legislatures may act to address conditions that produce poor health, immorality, or other social harms. He viewed the due process objection as resting on a vague reading of the Fifth Amendment.¹

Holmes also rejected the majority’s use of the Nineteenth Amendment to sweep away labor protections. The right to vote, he wrote, did not erase the physical or economic differences that could justify wage protections for women.¹

How Adkins Was Overruled

The precedent held until 1937, when the Court decided West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote that regulation of the freedom of contract is permitted when the rules are reasonable and protect the community from harm.²

The Court recognized that workers denied a living wage are liable to be exploited, and that such exploitation shifts a burden to the community that must support them. West Coast Hotel expressly overruled Adkins and removed the Due Process Clause as a serious obstacle to minimum wage legislation.²

1
Justia. Adkins v. Children’s Hospital, 261 U.S. 525
2
Justia. West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379