Missouri Rev.Stat., 1949, § 129.060, which provides that any
employee entitled to vote may absent himself from his employment
for four hours between the opening and closing of the polls on
election days and that any employer who deducts wages for that
absence is guilty of a misdemeanor, does not violate the Due
Process or Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or
the Contract Clause of Art. I, § 10, of the Federal Constitution.
Pp.
342 U. S.
421-425.
362 Mo. 299,
240 S.W.2d
886, affirmed.
Appellant was convicted in a Missouri state court of a violation
of Mo.Rev.Stat., 1949, § 129.060. The Supreme Court of Missouri
affirmed. 362 Mo. 299,
240 S.W.2d
886. On appeal to this Court,
affirmed, p.
342 U. S.
425.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court.
Missouri has a statute, Mo.Rev.Stat., 1949, § 129.060, first
enacted in 1897, which was designed to end the coercion of
employees by employers in the exercise of the franchise. It
provides that an employee may absent himself
Page 342 U. S. 422
from his employment for four hours between the opening and
closing of the polls without penalty, and that any employer who,
among other things, deducts wages for that absence is guilty of a
misdemeanor. [
Footnote 1]
Appellant is a Missouri corporation doing business in St. Louis.
November 5, 1946, was a day for general elections in Missouri, the
polls being open from 6 A.M. to 7 P.M. One Grotemeyer, an employee
of appellant, was on a shift that worked from 8 A.M. to 4:30 P.M.
each day, with thirty minutes for lunch. His rate of pay was $1.60
an hour. He requested four hours from the scheduled work day to
vote on November 5, 1946. That request was refused, but Grotemeyer
and all other employees on his shift were allowed to leave at 3
P.M. that day, which gave them four consecutive hours to vote
before the polls closed.
Grotemeyer left his work at 3 P.M. in order to vote, and did not
return to work that day. He was not paid for the hour and a half
between 3 P.M. and 4:30 P.M. Appellant was found guilty and fined
for penalizing Grotemeyer in violation of the statute. The judgment
was affirmed by the Missouri Supreme Court, 362 Mo. 299, 240
Page 342 U. S. 423
S.W.2d 886, over the objection that the statute violated the Due
Process and the Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth
Amendment and the Contract Clause of Art. I, § 10.
The liberty of contract argument pressed on us is reminiscent of
the philosophy of
Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S.
45, which invalidated a New York law prescribing maximum
hours for work in bakeries;
Coppage v. Kansas,
236 U. S. 1, which
struck down a Kansas statute outlawing "yellow dog" contracts;
Adkins v. Children's Hospital, 261 U.
S. 525, which held unconstitutional a federal statute
fixing minimum wage standards for women in the District of
Columbia, and others of that vintage. Our recent decisions make
plain that we do not sit as a super-legislature to weigh the wisdom
of legislation nor to decide whether the policy which it expresses
offends the public welfare. The legislative power has limits, as
Tot v. United States, 319 U. S. 463,
holds. 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.
That is the essence of
West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish,
300 U. S. 379;
Nebbia v. New York, 291 U. S. 502;
Olsen v. Nebraska, 313 U. S. 236;
Lincoln Union v. Northwestern Iron & Metal Co.,
335 U. S. 525, and
California State Auto. Assn. v. Maloney, 341 U.
S. 105.
West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, supra, overruling
Adkins v. Children's Hospital, supra, held constitutional
a state law fixing minimum wages for women. The present statutes
contains in form a minimum wage requirement. There is a difference
in the purpose of the legislation. Here, it is not the protection
of the health and morals of the citizen. Missouri, by this
legislation, has sought
Page 342 U. S. 424
to safeguard the right of suffrage by taking from employers the
incentive and power to use their leverage over employees to
influence the vote. But the police power is not confined to a
narrow category; it extends, as stated in
Noble State Bank v.
Haskell, 219 U. S. 104,
219 U. S. 111,
to all the great public needs. The protection of the right of
suffrage under our scheme of things is basic and fundamental.
[
Footnote 2]
The only semblance of substance in the constitutional objection
to Missouri's law is that the employer must pay wages for a period
in which the employee performs no services. Of course, many forms
of regulation reduce the net return of the enterprise, yet that
gives rise to no constitutional infirmity.
See Queenside Hills
Co. v. Saxl, 328 U. S. 80;
California Auto. Assn. v. Maloney, supra. 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,
Page 342 U. S. 425
and physical wellbeing of the community is one part of it; the
political wellbeing, 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.
The classification of voters so as to free employees from the
domination of employers is an attempt to deal with an evil to which
the one group has been exposed. The need for that classification is
a matter for legislative judgment,
American Federation of Labor
v. American Sash Co., 335 U. S. 538, and
does not amount to a denial of equal protection under the laws.
Affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER concurs in the result.
[
Footnote 1]
"Any person entitled to vote at any election in this state
shall, on the day of such election, be entitled to absent himself
from any services or employment in which he is then engaged or
employed, for a period of four hours between the times of opening
and closing the polls, and such voter shall not, because of so
absenting himself, be liable to any penalty; provided, however,
that his employer may specify the hours during which such employee
may absent himself as aforesaid. Any person or corporation who
shall refuse to any employee the privilege hereby conferred, or
shall discharge or threaten to discharge any employee for absenting
himself from his work for the purpose of said election, or shall
cause any employee to suffer any penalty or deduction of wages
because of the exercise of such privilege, or who shall, directly
or indirectly, violate the provisions of this section, shall be
deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof be fined
in any sum not exceeding five hundred dollars."
[
Footnote 2]
Decisions contrary to that of the Missouri Supreme Court in this
case have been rendered by the Court of Appeals of Kentucky in
Illinois Central R. Co. v. Commonwealth, 305 Ky. 632, 204
S.W.2d 973, and by the Supreme Court of Illinois in
People v.
Chicago, M. & St.P. R. Co., 306 Ill. 486, 138 N.E. 155.
But cf. Zelney v. Murphy, 387 Ill. 492, 56 N.E.2d 754. The
Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, in
People
v. Ford Motor Co., 271 App.Div. 141, 63 N.Y.S.2d 697, and the
Appellate Department of the Superior Court of California, in
Ballarini v. Schlage Lock Co., 100 Cal.
App. 2d Supp. 859, 226 P.2d 771, held in accord with Missouri.
For a review of legislation in this field,
see 47
Col.L.Rev. 135.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON, dissenting.
The constitutional issue in this case, if not very vital in its
present application, surely is a debatable one. Two state courts of
last resort, the only ones to consider similar legislation, have
held it unconstitutional. [
Footnote
2/1] Only unreviewed decisions of intermediate courts [
Footnote 2/2] can be cited in support of
the Court's holding.
Page 342 U. S. 426
Appellant employed one Grotemeyer, under a union contract, on an
hourly basis at $1.60 per hour for each hour worked. He demanded a
four-hour leave of absence, with full pay, on election day to do
campaigning and to get out the vote. It is stipulated that his
residence was 200 feet from the polling place, and that it actually
took him about five minutes to vote. Appellant closed the day's
work for all employees one and one-half hours earlier than usual,
which gave them the statutory four hours before the polls closed.
For failure to pay something less than $3 for this hour and a half
which Grotemeyer did not work and for which his contract did not
provide that he should be paid, the employer is convicted of crime
under the statute set forth in the Court's opinion.
To sustain this statute by resort to the analogy of minimum wage
laws seems so far-fetched and unconvincing as to demonstrate its
weakness, rather than its strength. Because a State may require
payment of a minimum wage for hours that are worked, it does not
follow that it may compel payment for time that is not worked. To
overlook a distinction so fundamental is to confuse the point in
issue.
The Court, by speaking of the statute as though it applies only
to industry, sinister and big, further obscures the real principle
involved. The statute plainly requires farmers, small service
enterprises, professional offices, housewives with domestic help,
and all other employers, not only to allow their employees time to
vote, but to pay them for time to do so. It does not, however,
require the employee to use any part of such time for that purpose.
Such legislation stands in a class by itself, and should not be
uncritically commended as a mere regulation of "practices in the
business-labor field."
Obtaining a full and free expression from all qualified voters
at the polls is so fundamental to a successful representative
government that a State rightly concerns itself
Page 342 U. S. 427
with the removal of every obstruction to the right and
opportunity to vote freely. Courts should go far to sustain
legislation designed to relieve employees from obligations to
private employers which would stand in the way of their duty as
citizens.
But there must be some limit to the power to shift the whole
voting burden from the voter to someone else who happens to stand
in some economic relationship to him. Getting out the vote is not
the business of employers; indeed, I have regarded it as a
political abuse when employers concerned themselves with their
employees' voting. It is either the voter's own business or the
State's business. I do not question that the incentive which this
statute offers will help swell the vote; to require that employees
be paid time-and-a-half would swell it still more and double-time
would do even better. But does the success of an enticement to vote
justify putting its cost on some other citizen?
The discriminatory character of this statute is flagrant. It is
obvious that not everybody will be paid for voting, and the
"rational basis" on which the State has ordered that some be paid
while others are not eludes me. If there is a need for a subsidy to
get out the vote, no reason is apparent to me why it should go to
one who lives 200 feet from his polling place, but not to a
self-employed farmer who may have to lay down his work and let his
equipment idle for several hours while he travels several miles
over bad fall roads to do his duty as a citizen. If he has a hired
man, he must also lose his hand's time and his pay. Perhaps some
plan will be forthcoming to pay the farmer by requiring his
mortgagee to rebate some proportion of the interest on the farm
mortgage if he will vote. It would not differ in principle. But no
way occurs to me by which the doctor can charge some patient or the
lawyer some client for the call he could not receive while he was
voting.
Page 342 U. S. 428
I suppose a State itself has considerable latitude to offer
inducements to voters who do not value their franchise enough to
vote on their own time, even if they seem to me corrupting or
discriminating ones. Perhaps my difficulty with today's decision is
that I cannot rise above an old-fashioned valuation of American
citizenship which makes a state-imposed pay-for-voting system
appear to be a confession of failure of popular representative
government.
It undoubtedly is the right of every union negotiating with an
employer to bargain for voting time without loss of pay. It is
equally the right of any individual employee to make that part of
his hire. I have no reason to doubt that a large number of voters
already have voluntary arrangements which make their absence for
voting without cost. But a constitutional philosophy which
sanctions intervention by the State to fix terms of pay without
work may be available tomorrow to give constitutional sanction to
state-imposed terms of employment less benevolent.
[
Footnote 2/1]
Illinois Central R. Co. v. Commonwealth, 305 Ky. 632,
204 S.W.2d 973;
People v. Chicago, M. & St.P. R. Co.,
306 Ill. 486, 138 N.E. 155.
Cf. Zelney v. Murphy, 387 Ill.
492, 56 N.E.2d 754.
[
Footnote 2/2]
People v. Ford Motor Co., 271 App.Div. 141, 63 N.Y.S.2d
697;
Ballarini v. Schlage Lock Co., 100 Cal.
App. 2d Supp. 859, 226 P.2d 771.