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· 1/25/1915

Coppage v. Kansas

Citations

  • 236 U.S. 1
  • 35 S. Ct. 240
  • 59 L. Ed. 441
  • 1915 U.S. LEXIS 1798

Syllabus

<p>The Kansas statute declaring it a misdemeanor punishable by fine or imprisonment for an employer to require an employé to agree not to become or remain a member of any labor organization durihg’the time of the employment, so far as it applies to such a case as the , present, where an employé at will, a man of full age and understanding, was merely required to freely choose whether he would give up his position of employment or would agree to refrain from association with the union while so employed, the case being free from any element of coercion or undue influence; held, repugnant to the “due process” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.</p> <p>Adair v. United States, 208 U. S. 161, followed to the effect that it is the constitutional right of an employer to dispense with the services of an'employé because of his membership in a labor union, just as it is the constitutional right of an employé to quit the service of an employer, who employs non-union men.</p> <p>Under constitutional freedom of contract, whatever either party has the right to treat as sufficient ground for terminating the employment where there is no stipulation on the subject he has the right to provide against by insisting that a stipulation respecting it shall be á sine qua non of the inception of the employment, or of its continuance if terminable at will.</p> <p>Included in. the right of personal liberty and the right of private property — partaking of the nature of each — is the right to make contracts for the acquisition of property, chief among which is that of personal employment by which labor and other services are exchanged for money or other forms of property.</p> <p>A State cannot, by designating as “coercion” conduct which is not ■ such in truth, render criminal any normal and essentially-innocent exercise of personal liberty; for to permit this would deprive the Fourteenth Amendment of its effective force in this respect.</p> <p>When a party appeals to this court for the protectio

About this case

Coppage v. Kansas

Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U.S. 1 (1915), was a Supreme Court of the United States case based on United States labor law that allowed employers to implement contracts—called yellow-dog contracts —which forbade employees from joining unions .

The case was decided in the era prior to the Great Depression , when the Supreme Court invalidated laws that imposed restrictions on contracts, especially those of employment. The liberty of contract became viewed as a fundamental right that could be abridged only in extreme circumstances; abridgments violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment .

Contents

Background

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coppage_v._Kansas&action=edit&section=1 "Edit section: Background")

Coppage, an employer, forbade his employees from joining labor unions by making it part of their contract, which the employee signed before being hired. That violated a Kansas law that prohibited such contracts.

Decision

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coppage_v._Kansas&action=edit&section=2 "Edit section: Decision")

The majority opinion was written by Justice Pitney . It held that the law prohibiting such contracts violated Coppage's due process rights, as the government did not have a responsibility to prevent inequality of bargaining power :

[It] is said... To be a matter of common knowledge that 'employees, as a rule, are not financially able to be as independent in making contracts for the sale of their labor as are employers in making contracts of purchase thereof.' No doubt, wherever the right of private property exists, there must and will be inequalities of fortune. [Since] it is self-evident that... some persons must have more property than others, it is... impossible to uphold freedom of contract and the right of private property without at the same time recognizing as legitimate those inequalities of fortune that are the necessary result of the exercise of those rights.

He concluded that a state in the exercise of its police power did not have the right to redress imbalances of bargaining power and that requiring a man to give up the right to be in a union as a condition of employment does "not to ask him to give up any part of his constitutional freedom."

Dissents

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coppage_v._Kansas&action=edit&section=3 "Edit section: Dissents")

Justice Holmes wrote a dissent in which he called again for Lochner to be overruled and stated that the Constitution does not specifically prohibit a law like the one Kansas had and so it should be upheld:

I think the judgment should be affirmed. In present conditions, a workman not unnaturally may believe that only by belonging to a union can he secure a contract that shall be fair to him. _Holden v. Hardy _, 169 U. S. 366, 169 U. S. 397; _Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R. Co. v. McGuire _, 219 U. S. 549, 219 U. S. 570. If that belief, whether right or wrong, may be held by a reasonable man, it seems to me that it may be enforced by law in order to establish the equality of position between the parties in which liberty of contract begins. Whether in the long run it is wise for the workingmen to enact legislation of this sort is not my concern, but I am strongly of opinion that there is nothing in the Constitution of the United States to prevent it, and that _Adair v. United States _, 208 U. S. 161, and _Lochner v. New York _, 198 U. S. 45, should be overruled. I have stated my grounds in those cases, and think it unnecessary to add others that I think exist. See further _Vegelahn v. Guntner _, 167 Mass. 92, 104, 108; _Plant v. Woods _, 176 Mass. 492, 505. I still entertain the opinions expressed by me in Massachusetts.

Justice Day 's dissent would have affirmed the liberty of contract against arbitrary legislative restraints but deferred more to the legislature on the question of whether the law upheld the public welfare. He also argued, "A man may not barter away his life or his freedom, or his substantial rights."

See also

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coppage_v._Kansas&action=edit&section=4 "Edit section: See also")

References

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coppage_v._Kansas&action=edit&section=5 "Edit section: References")

  1. ↑ Kerian, Jon (January 1, 1961). "Injunctions in Labor Disputes: The History of the Norris-LaGuardia Act" . North Dakota Law Review. 37 (1): 49–66. ISSN  0029-2745 .

Further reading

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coppage_v._Kansas&action=edit&section=6 "Edit section: Further reading")

External links

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coppage_v._Kansas&action=edit&section=7 "Edit section: External links")

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Editorial context from Wikipedia (CC-BY-SA 4.0).

Judges: Day, Holmes, Hughes, Pitney

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