A municipal ordinance which vests in supervisory authorities a naked and arbitrary power to grant or withhold consent to the operation of laundries in wooden buildings, without consideration of the circumstances of individual cases, constitutes a denial of equal protection of the law when consent is withheld from certain persons solely on the basis of nationality.[1110] But a city council may reserve to itself the power to make exceptions from a ban on the operation of a dairy within the city,[1111] or from building line restrictions.[1112] Written permission of the mayor or president of the city council may be required before any person shall move a building on a street.[1113] The Mayor may be empowered to determine whether an applicant has a good character and reputation and is a suitable person to receive a license for the sale of cigarettes.[1114] In a recent case[1115] the Court held that the unfettered discretion of officer river pilots to select their apprentices, which was almost invariably exercised in favor of their relatives and friends, was not a denial of equal protection to persons not selected despite the fact that such apprenticeship was requisite for appointment as a pilot.
Alien Laws
The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits purely arbitrary discrimination against aliens.[1116] Where alien race and allegiance bear a reasonable relation to a legitimate object of legislation, it may be made the basis of classification. Thus, legislation has been upheld under which aliens were forbidden to conduct pool rooms[1117] or to take game or possess shotguns.[1118] A discrimination between citizens and aliens in the matter of employment on public works is not unconstitutional.[1119] A State cannot, however, deny to aliens the right to earn a living in ordinary occupations. Consequently, a statute requiring that employers of more than five workers employ not less than eighty percent qualified electors or natural born citizens denies equal protection of the law.[1120] Likewise a State law forbidding the issuance of commercial fishing licenses to aliens ineligible for citizenship has been held void.[1121] State laws forbidding aliens to own real estate, have been upheld in the past.[1122] A less sympathetic attitude toward such legislation was indicated in Oyama v. California, in 1948.[1123] There the State of California sought to escheat land owned by an American-born son of a Japanese father under a provision of its Alien Land Law which made payment by an alien of the consideration for a transfer of land to a third person prima facie evidence of intent to evade the statute. The Court held that the burden of proof imposed upon the son, an American citizen, by reason of his parent's country of origin, was an unlawful discrimination, but it did not pass upon the constitutionality of the Alien Land Law itself. In concurring opinions four Justices took the position that the law was incompatible with the Fourteenth Amendment.[1124]
Labor Relations
Objections to labor legislation on the ground that the limitation of particular regulations to specified industries was obnoxious to the equal protection clause, have been consistently overruled. Statutes limiting hours of labor for employees in mines, smelters,[1125] mills, factories,[1126] or on public works[1127] have been sustained. So also was a statute forbidding persons engaged in mining and manufacturing to issue orders for payment of labor unless redeemable at face value in cash.[1128] The exemption of mines employing less than ten persons from a law pertaining to measurement of coal to determine a miner's wages is not unreasonable.[1129] All corporations,[1130] or public service corporations,[1131] may be required to issue to employees who leave their service letters stating the nature of the service and the cause of leaving even though other employers are not.
Industries may be classified in a workmen's compensation act according to the respective hazards of each;[1132] the exemption of farm laborers and domestic servants does not render such an act invalid.[1133] A statute providing that no person shall be denied opportunity for employment because he is not a member of a union does not offend the equal protection clause.[1134]
Women, or particular classes of women, may be singled out for special treatment, in the exercise of the State's protective power, without violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Classification may be based on differences either in their physical characteristics or in the social conditions which surround their employment. Restrictions on conditions of employment in particular occupations are not invalid because the law might have been made broader.[1135] One of the earliest pieces of social legislation to be sustained was a ten-hour law for women employed in laundries.[1136] A law limiting hours of labor for women in hotels is not rendered unconstitutional by reason of the exemption of certain railroad restaurants.[1137] Night work by women in restaurants may be prohibited.[1138] Reversing earlier decisions, the Supreme Court upheld a minimum wage law for women in 1937, saying that their unequal bargaining position justified a law applicable only to them.[1139]
Women may be forbidden to engage in an occupation where their employment may create special moral and social problems. A State statute forbidding women to act as bartenders, but making an exception in favor of wives and daughters of the male owners of liquor establishments was sustained over the objection, which three Justices found persuasive, that the act denied the equal protection of the law to female owners of such establishments.[1140] Said Justice Frankfurter for the majority: "The fact that women may now have achieved the virtues that men have long claimed as their prerogatives and now indulge in vices that men have long practiced, does not preclude the States from drawing a sharp line between the sexes, certainly in such matters as the regulation of the liquor traffic. * * * The Constitution does not require legislatures to reflect sociological insight, or shifting social standards, any more than it requires them to keep abreast of the latest scientific standards."[1141]