## Facts

- Oregon enacted a 1913 statute governing work in “any mill, factory or manufacturing establishment.”
- The statute barred employing a person more than ten hours in one day, with limited exceptions (e.g., watchmen, necessary repairs, emergencies involving imminent danger to life or property).
- The statute allowed up to three hours of overtime in a day if paid at time-and-a-half.
- The statute declared its purpose was protecting workers’ physical well-being and that work beyond ten hours in the covered establishments was injurious to health.
- Franklin O. Bunting, an Oregon employer, was indicted for employing Hammersly in a flour mill for thirteen hours in one day without meeting an exception and without paying the required overtime premium.
- Bunting challenged the indictment as violating the Fourteenth Amendment and the Oregon Constitution; the trial court rejected the challenge, convicted him, and imposed a $50 fine.
- The Oregon Supreme Court affirmed, and the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed the Fourteenth Amendment claims.

## Issues

1. Whether the Oregon statute was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment as an impermissible interference with liberty of contract and deprivation of due process.
2. Whether the statute denied equal protection by singling out mills, factories, and manufacturing establishments for special regulation.
3. Whether the overtime pay requirement transformed the statute into a wage regulation outside the state’s police power justification for health and safety laws.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the state court’s judgment and upheld the statute.
- The Court treated the law as an hours-of-service regulation aimed at health, not as a wage-fixing law.
- The overtime premium was characterized as a deterrent or penalty encouraging compliance with the ten-hour limit.
- The Court held the classification limiting the law to mills, factories, and manufacturing establishments was not an unconstitutional discrimination.
- The Court did not decide whether the statute could be sustained as a wage regulation, because it construed the law as an hours limitation.

## Legal Principles

- A state may regulate hours of labor in specified industries as a health measure under its police power consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment.
- Courts generally defer to legislative and state-court judgments about the health necessity or usefulness of an hours limit when the record supplies no contrary facts.
- An overtime premium can be treated as an enforcement mechanism supporting an hours limit rather than as direct wage regulation, depending on the statute’s purpose and operation.
- Equal protection permits reasonable industrial classifications; regulating mills, factories, and manufacturing establishments differently from other workplaces is permissible if not arbitrary.
- When a statute serves a legitimate end within an admitted governmental power, courts need not be convinced of the legislature’s precise reasons or the wisdom of the chosen means.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld Oregon’s ten-hour limit for work in mills, factories, and manufacturing establishments, including a time-and-a-half overtime provision, as a constitutional health regulation within the state’s police power that did not violate due process, liberty of contract, or equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.


Bunting v. Oregon, 243 U.S. 426 (1917)