Minimum Wage Laws.—The theory that a law prescribing minimum wages for women and children violates due process by impairing freedom of contract was finally discarded in 1937.[141] The current theory of the Court, particularly when labor is the beneficiary of legislation, was recently stated by Justice Douglas for a majority of the Court, in the following terms: "Our recent decisions make plain that we do not sit as a superlegislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation nor to decide whether the policy which it expresses offends the public welfare. The legislative power has limits * * *. But the state legislatures have constitutional authority to experiment with new techniques; they are entitled to their own standard of the public welfare; they may within extremely broad limits control practices in the business-labor field, so long as specific constitutional prohibitions are not violated and so long as conflicts with valid and controlling federal laws are avoided."[142] Proceeding from this basis the Court sustained a Missouri statute giving employees the right to absent themselves four hours on election day, between the opening and closing of the polls, without deduction of wages for their absence. It was admitted that this was a minimum wage law, but, said Justice Douglas, "the protection of the right of suffrage under our scheme of things is basic and fundamental," and hence within the police power. "Of course," the Justice added, "many forms of regulation reduce the net return of the enterprise * * * Most regulations of business necessarily impose financial burdens on the enterprise for which no compensation is paid. Those are part of the costs of our civilization. Extreme cases are conjured up where an employer is required to pay wages for a period that has no relation to the legitimate end. Those cases can await decision as and when they arise. The present law has no such infirmity. It is designed to eliminate any penalty for exercising the right of suffrage and to remove a practical obstacle to getting out the vote. The public welfare is a broad and inclusive concept. The moral, social, economic, and physical well-being of the community is one part of it; the political well-being, another. The police power which is adequate to fix the financial burden for one is adequate for the other. The judgment of the legislature that time out for voting should cost the employee nothing may be a debatable one. It is indeed conceded by the opposition to be such. But if our recent cases mean anything, they leave debatable issues as respects business, economic, and social affairs to legislative decision. We could strike down this law only if we returned to the philosophy of the Lochner, Coppage, and Adkins cases."[143]
Workmen's Compensation Laws.—"This Court repeatedly has upheld the authority of the States to establish by legislation departures from the fellow-servant rule and other common-law rules affecting the employer's liability for personal injuries to the employee.[144] * * * These decisions have established the propositions that the rules of law concerning the employer's responsibility for personal injury or death of an employee arising in the course of employment are not beyond alteration by legislation in the public interest; that no person has a vested right entitling him to have these any more than other rules of law remain unchanged for his benefit; and that, if we exclude arbitrary and unreasonable changes, liability may be imposed upon the employer without fault, and the rules respecting his responsibility to one employee for the negligence of another and respecting contributory negligence and assumption of risk are subject to legislative change."[145]
Accordingly, a State statute which provided an exclusive system to govern the liabilities of employers and the rights of employees and their dependents, in respect of compensation for disabling injuries and death caused by accident in certain hazardous occupations,[146] was held not to work a deprivation of property without due process of law in rendering the employer liable irrespective of the doctrines of negligence, contributory negligence, assumption of risk, and negligence of fellow-servants, nor in depriving the employee, or his dependents, of the higher damages which, in some cases, might be rendered under these doctrines.[147] Likewise, an act which allowed an injured employee an election of remedies permitting restricted recovery under a compensation law although guilty of contributory negligence, and full compensatory damages under the Employers' Liability Act did not deprive an employer of his property without due process of law.[148] Similarly, an elective statute has been sustained which provided that, in actions against employers rejecting the system, the inquiry should be presumed to have resulted directly from the employer's negligence and the burden of rebutting said presumption shall rest upon the latter.[149]
Contracts limiting liability for injuries, consummated in advance of the injury received, may be prohibited by the State, which may further stipulate that subsequent acceptance of benefits under such contracts shall not constitute satisfaction of a claim for injuries thereafter sustained.[150] Also, as applied to a nonresident alien employee hired within the State but injured on the outside, an act forbidding any contracts exempting employers from liability for injuries outside the State has been construed as not denying due process to the employer.[151] The fact that a State, after having allowed employers to cover their liability with a private insurer, subsequently withdrew that privilege and required them to contribute to a State Insurance Fund was held to effect no unconstitutional deprivation as applied to an employer who had obtained protection from an insurance company before this change went into effect.[152] Likewise, as long as the right to come under a workmen's compensation statute is optional with an employer, the latter, having chosen to accept benefits thereof, is estopped from attempting to escape its burdens by challenging the constitutionality of a provision thereof which makes the finding of fact of an industrial commission conclusive if supported by any evidence regardless of its preponderance.[153]
When, by the terms of a workmen's compensation statute, the wrongdoer, in case of wrongful death, is obliged to indemnify the employer or the insurance carrier of the employer of the decedent, in the amount which the latter were required under said act to contribute into special compensation funds, no unconstitutional deprivation of the wrongdoer's property was discernible.[154] By the same course of reasoning neither the employer nor the carrier was held to have been denied due process by another provision in an act requiring payments by them, in case an injured employee dies without dependents, into special funds to be used for vocational rehabilitation or disability compensation of injured workers of other establishments.[155] Compensation also need not be based exclusively on loss of earning power, and an award authorized by statute for injuries resulting in disfigurement of the face or head, independent of compensation for inability to work, has been conceded to be neither an arbitrary nor oppressive exercise of the police power.[156]
Collective Bargaining.—During the 1930's, liberty, in the sense of freedom of contract, judicially translated into what one Justice has labelled the Allgeyer-Lochner-Adair-Coppage doctrine,[157] lost its potency as an obstacle to the enforcement of legislation calculated to enhance the bargaining capacity of workers as against that already possessed by their employers. Prior to the manifestation, in Senn v. Tile Layers Protective Union,[158] decided in 1937, of a greater willingness to defer to legislative judgment as to the wisdom and need of such enactments, the Court had, on occasion, sustained measures such as one requiring every corporation to furnish, upon request, to any employee, when discharged or leaving its service, a letter, signed by the superintendent or manager, setting forth the nature and duration of his service to the corporation and stating truly the cause of his leaving.[159] Added provisions that such letters shall be on plain paper selected by the employee, signed in ink and sealed, and free from superfluous figures, and words, were also sustained as not amounting to any unconstitutional deprivation of liberty and property.[160] On the ground that the right to strike is not absolute, the Court in a similar manner upheld a statute by the terms of which an officer of a labor union was punished for having ordered a strike for the purpose of enforcing a payment to a former employee of a stale claim for wages.[161]