"Black Monday" Supreme Court Unanimously Strikes Down National Industrial Recovery Act in Three Anti-New Deal Rulings

On May 27, 1935—a day Roosevelt administration officials dub “Black Monday”—the Supreme Court delivers three unanimous decisions against the New Deal, with the most devastating being Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, which invalidates the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), a cornerstone of FDR’s recovery program. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, writing the majority opinion, strikes down the NIRA on two constitutional grounds: that Section 3 violates separation of powers through unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority to the executive branch, and that Congress exceeded its Commerce Clause powers because the chickens at issue were sold only to intrastate buyers. The decision voids hundreds of industry codes establishing minimum wages, maximum hours, and fair competition standards across the American economy, dealing what Roosevelt calls “one of the most important decisions ever rendered in this country.”

The Schechter brothers, Brooklyn poultry dealers, faced 60 charges of violating the “Live Poultry Code” including selling diseased chickens and failing to pay minimum wages—violations that became known as the “Sick Chicken” case. The Court’s 9-0 decision reflects the conservative majority’s “horse-and-buggy definition of interstate commerce” (as Roosevelt characterizes it), interpreting federal regulatory power so narrowly as to exclude most industrial regulation despite the national scope of the Great Depression. Justice Cardozo, joined by Justice Stone in a concurring opinion, agrees with the outcome but signals discomfort with the broader implications for federal power. The other two Black Monday cases—Humphrey’s Executor v. United States and Louisville Joint Stock Land Bank v. Radford—similarly constrain executive authority and New Deal programs.

Roosevelt publicly condemns the Court within one week, beginning a multi-year confrontation over judicial obstruction of democratic reforms. The Black Monday decisions galvanize corporate opposition to the New Deal, emboldening business interests who see the Supreme Court as their bulwark against economic regulation. The rulings demonstrate how judicial review can serve corporate power by invalidating popular democratic reforms, establishing precedent for a conservative Court majority to protect business interests against regulatory oversight—a pattern that recurs through subsequent eras of judicial activism favoring corporate rights over democratic governance. The constitutional crisis precipitated by Black Monday ultimately leads to Roosevelt’s controversial 1937 court-packing proposal and the Court’s subsequent reversal in the “switch in time that saved nine.”