Landmark Cases

Lochner v. New York

Citation Formats

General Reference

Law Atlas. "Lochner v. New York." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://law.interactiveatlas.org/landmark-cases/lochner-v-new-york.

APA Style

Law Atlas. (n.d.). Lochner v. New York. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://law.interactiveatlas.org/landmark-cases/lochner-v-new-york

BibTeX

@misc{lawatlas-lochner-v-new-york,
  author = {Law Atlas},
  title = {Lochner v. New York},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://law.interactiveatlas.org/landmark-cases/lochner-v-new-york},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

A 1905 United States Supreme Court decision striking down a New York law limiting bakers' working hours as an unconstitutional interference with freedom of contract under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Its approach, reading a specific economic theory into the Constitution, gave its name to the Lochner era of the Court's history and drew a landmark dissent from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Facts

Decision Year

1905 1

Decision Date

1905-04-17 1

Filed Date

1905-02-23 1

Holding

A New York statute capping bakery employees' working hours violated the liberty of contract the Court read into the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, and was struck down. 1

Current Status

Effectively repudiated by West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937), which upheld minimum-wage legislation and abandoned the freedom-of-contract doctrine Lochner enforced. Unlike Roe v. Wade's single formal overruling by Dobbs, the Lochner era ended gradually across several 1937 decisions; the case is treated by the Court and by scholars as discredited rather than as controlling law. 1

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Due Process

Lochner is the namesake case for the substantive due process line of reasoning the Due Process doctrine page should read as a discredited episode within, not as the doctrine's current shape.

Source The Oyez Project