Hammer v. Dagenhart

Hammer v. Dagenhart
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 15–16, 1918 Decided June 3, 1918
Full case name	Hammer, United States Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina v. Dagenhart, et al.
Citations	247 U.S. 251 (more) 38 S. Ct. 529; 62 L. Ed. 1101; 1918 U.S. LEXIS 1907; 3 A.L.R. 649
Prior history	Appeal from the District of the United States for the Western District of North Carolina
Holding
Congress has no power under the Commerce Clause to regulate labor conditions.
Court membership
Case opinions
Majority	Day, joined by White, Pitney, Van Devanter, McReynolds
Dissent	Holmes, joined by McKenna, Brandeis, Clarke
Laws applied
Keating-Owen Act of 1916; Commerce Clause of the U.S. Const.
Overruled by
United States v. Darby Lumber Co., 312 U.S. 100 (1941)

Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 (1918), was a United States Supreme Court decision involving the power of Congress to enact child labor laws. The Court held regulation of child labor in purely internal (to a single state) manufacturing, the products of which may never enter interstate commerce, to be beyond the power of Congress, distinguishing the Lottery line of cases, which concerned Congressional regulation of harms (e.g. interstate sale of lottery tickets) that required the use of interstate commerce.

During the Progressive Era, public sentiment in America turned against what was perceived as increasingly intolerable child labor conditions. Activities of such groups as the National Child Labor Committee, investigative journalists, and labor groups called attention to unhealthy and unsafe working conditions. Historical material presented by the Smithsonian Institution provides a sense of the motivation behind these concerns in an electronic exhibit on the work of the photographer Lewis Hine:

Over and over, Hine saw children working sixty and seventy-hour weeks, by day and by night, often under hazardous conditions. He saw children caught in a cycle of poverty, with parents often so ill-paid that they could not support a family on their earnings alone, and had to rely on their children's earnings as a supplement for the family's survival. He saw children growing up stunted mentally (illiterate or barely able to read because their jobs kept them out of school) and physically (from lack of fresh air, exercise, and time to relax and play). He saw countless children who had been injured and permanently disabled on the job; he knew that, in the cotton mills for example, children had accident rates three times those of adults.

Responding to the growing public concern, many states sought to impose local restrictions on child labor. In many states, however, the attempt to regulate was ineffective. In addition, manufacturers argued that where restrictions were imposed only in selected states, it placed them at a competitive disadvantage with competitors from states which still placed no restrictions.