Muller v. Oregon: Brandeis Brief Upholds Women's Labor Protections Using Paternalistic Reasoning

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld an Oregon law limiting women’s workdays to ten hours in Muller v. Oregon, creating a narrow exception to the anti-labor Lochner doctrine. Attorney Louis Brandeis filed a revolutionary 113-page brief containing only two pages of legal argument and over 100 pages of sociological data, medical evidence, and expert testimony on the harmful effects of long working hours on women’s health. This “Brandeis Brief” technique introduced social science evidence into constitutional adjudication.

While the decision represented a Progressive Era victory for labor protections, the Court’s reasoning relied on paternalistic assumptions about women’s physical weakness and maternal role. Justice David Brewer wrote that a woman’s “physical structure and the performance of maternal functions” justified protective legislation that would be unconstitutional for men under Lochner v. New York (1905). The ruling perpetuated the legal fiction that women required special protection while men could be subjected to unlimited exploitation, and it reinforced gender-based employment discrimination for decades.

The case illustrates the contradictions of Progressive Era reform: real improvements in working conditions achieved through legal frameworks that reinforced systemic inequality. The Court’s willingness to carve out exceptions based on paternalism rather than overturning Lochner entirely meant that general labor protections remained constitutionally suspect until the 1930s. Corporate interests could continue exploiting male workers while women faced both protective legislation and exclusion from many occupations deemed unsuitable for the “weaker sex.”