Lochner v. New York

When Lochner was convicted under the law for allowing his employee to work beyond the statutory maximum, he invoked the liberty of contract doctrine to challenge the regulation's constitutionality. The Court agreed that while New York could invoke its police power to protect health and safety, the bakery maximum-hours law failed the required test because it bore no real or substantial relationship to protecting worker health—baking did not present the dangerous conditions that would justify such paternalistic regulation of the employment relationship. Absent a genuine health justification, the state's intrusion into the freedom of employer and employee to set their own working arrangements violated the Due Process Clause.