United States Supreme Court Cases & Opinions

U.S. Supreme Court

Radice v. New York, 264 U.S. 292 (1924)

Radice v. New York

No. 176

Argued January 17, 18, 1924

Decided March 10, 1924

264 U.S. 292

Syllabus

1. A New York statute prohibiting employment of women in restaurants in large cities (cities of the first and second class) between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. held not an arbitrary and undue interference with the liberty of contract of the women and their employers, but justifiable as a health measure. P. 264 U. S. 294. Adkins v. Children's Hospital, 261 U. S. 525, distinguished.

2. Whether this kind of work is so substantially and especially detrimental to the health and welfare of women engaging in it as to justify its suppression in their case is a question of fact as to which the Court is unable to say that the finding of the legislature was clearly unfounded. Id.

3. The regulation does not deny the equal protection of the laws either (a) because it applies only to first and second class cities, or (b) because it does not apply to women employed in restaurants as singers and performers, to attendants in ladies' cloak rooms and parlors and those employed in hotel dining rooms and kitchens, or in lunch rooms or restaurants conducted by employers solely for the benefit of their employees. P. 264 U. S. 296.

4. To be violative of the Equal Protection Clause, the inequality produced by a statute must be actually and palpably unreasonable and arbitrary. Id.

234 N.Y. 518 affirmed.

Error to a judgment entered in the City Court of Buffalo upon remittitur from the Court of Appeals affirming a conviction of plaintiff in error for violating a statute forbidding night employment of women.

Page 264 U. S. 293