Appellant
T. B. Coppage
Appellee
State of Kansas
Appellant's Claim
Kansas statute prohibiting "yellow dog contracts" did not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Chief Lawyers for Appellant
R. R. Vermilon, W. F. Evans
Chief Lawyers for Appellee
John S. Dawson, Attorney General of Kansas; J. I. Sheppard
Justices for the Court
Joseph Rucker Lamar, Joseph McKenna, James Clark McReynolds, Mahlon Pitney (writing for the Court), Willis Van Devanter, Edward Douglass White
Justices Dissenting
William Rufus Day, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Evans Hughes
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
25 January 1915
Decision
The Kansas statute, which outlawed yellow dog contracts, was an invalid and repressive infringement of an employer's right to engage in "freedom of contract" under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Significance
This decision of the U.S. Supreme Court enjoined the state of Kansas from enforcing an act banning "yellow dog contracts" The U.S. Supreme Court reasonedthat existence of such laws were inconsistent with "freedom of contract" provisions guaranteed under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In overruling the lower court's decision to sustain the appellant's conviction, the justices expressed that inequalities between employers and employees were not sufficient to allow statutory provisions to restrict the right of an employer to enter into a free and binding contract. This ruling reflected thelast breath of an American industrial revolution which tended to privilege employer's rights over those of labor.
The state of Kansas passed an act in 1903 which prevented employers from stopping employees from joining labor unions as a condition of employment. The main provisions of the Kansas statute were in two parts. The first specificallyprohibited companies from any action that would "coerce, require, demand, orinfluence any person or persons to enter into any agreement, either writtenor verbal, not to join or become or remain a member of any labor organizationor association, as a condition of such person or persons securing employment, or continuing in the employment." The second part stipulated that any member of a firm who violated the statutory provisions of the first provision of the statute would be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined by an amount not less than $50 or imprisoned no less than 30 days.
In the summer of 1911, Hedges, an employee of the St. Louis & San Francisco Railway Company (Frisco Lines), was required to sign a written agreement presented to him by T. B. Coppage (superintendent of Frisco Lines), wherein heagreed to relinquish membership in his labor union if he wanted to retain his job. Hedges, however, did not want to withdraw from the union so he was discharged. Coppage, was charged in a Kansas court and found guilty of preventing his employee from membership in a union. He was ordered to pay a fine or goto jail. Coppage appealed his conviction to the Kansas State Supreme Court.Nevertheless, the judgment of the lower court was affirmed; the Kansas StateSupreme Court concluded that Kansas law prohibiting yellow dog contracts wasconstitutional.
Employers' Rights Upheld
The U.S. Supreme Court overruled the judgment of the lower courts. The majority did not find any element of pressure or duress in the appellant's actions.The justices considered Coppage's act an appropriate exercise of employer rights under Fourteenth Amendment provisions regarding "freedom of contract." They found that Hedges was not coerced when he was asked to sign a contract containing provisions to which he was not willing to accede. The Court believedhe had opportunity to decide and choose whether to withdraw from membershipin his union or remain in the service of his employer. The Court reasoned that requirements presented to Hedges by the representative of the railway company (Coppage) were not unconstitutional and that no coercion was evident because Hedges had opportunity to "exercise a voluntary choice."
In a comparable, related case, Adair v. United States (1908), a yellowdog contract was held as being constitutionally legal under what the justices viewed as being an issue of "freedom of contract" despite legislation passed by Congress which were aimed at prohibition of such practices. Justice Pitney, in writing for the majority, maintained that
The Court reasoned that, as in Adair, there had to be an equal balancebetween employer and employee rights. As in Adair, justices chose toprivilege an employer's property rights and due process rights under the Fifth Amendment. The Court rationalized that if it was unconstitutional for the government "to deprive an employer of liberty and property for threatening anemployee with loss of employment, or discriminating him (the employee) because of his membership in a labor organization," then it was equally illegal forstates to "similarly punish an employer for requiring his employee, as a condition of securing or retaining employment, to agree not to become or remaina member of such an organization while so employed." (Clearly, the 1915 Court, under Chief Justice White, was at odds with the slow, eventual movement oflegislators towards legislation which would eventually proscribe yellow dog contracts.)
Concluding that the notion of an employer's right to "freedom of contract" was sufficient to justify Coppage's actions (on behalf of his company), the majority felt that Kansas's yellow dog legislation was "arbitrary" and infringedon the equal rights of companies. The law was an inappropriate "exercise ofthe police power of the state." The justices did not feel that the appellanthad exercised compulsory influence and thus, his actions did not represent aviolation of law. The justices for the majority did not deny that states weregranted the right to exercise police power to prohibit potential coercive requirements in contracts between employers and employees. But they could not accept the findings of lower courts that (as an authorized representative of his company) Coppage's action should be treated as criminal and punishable when he offered Hedges, without "undue influence," an option to remain in the employ of Frisco Lines or leave, and Coppage left Hedges free to make a decision.
The Court reasoned that the Kansas statute prohibiting yellow dog contracts represented an unfair requirement on employers when negotiating a contract with employees. Due process provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment safeguarded "liberty," "property", and "freedom of contracting." Justices reasoned that "inequalities of fortune" were legal and recognizable as a natural process of negotiating and making contracts. Thus, the Court viewed Kansas law as an indirect attempt to overthrow such inherent inequities without recognizing the existence of an employer's constitutional guarantees that safeguarded company interests.
The majority justices posited that the Kansas law was not properly legislatedbecause it infringed on an employer's right to make contracts favoring the interests of the employer's company. The Court believed Kansas statute outlawed the "exercise of personal liberty and property rights" and represented an inappropriate application of the state's police power. Further, under the Fourteenth Amendment, an employer's contracting rights were abridged because thestatute denied an employer the opportunity to decide whether membership in alabor organization was an acceptable condition of employment. Characterizingthe relationship between employer and employee as a "voluntary relationship,"the Court found inappropriate legislation that characterized as criminal conduct an employer's prescription of terms under which an employee could continue relations with his employee.
The justices pointed out that freedom of choice was equal for both parties (for the employer to employ a laborer who met its needs, and for the laborer tochoose whether to relinquish union membership in order to remain employed.)Offering an employee such an option could not be characterized as deprivationof any constitutional freedom. Both parties were free to "say no" if not satisfied with terms of employment; thus, as a part of the process of equal bargaining, conditions of employment did not have to be regarded as unlawful or coercive if an employer's requirements legitimately exercised his right to "freedom of contract." The majority justices were persistent and clear that no "legislative restrictions" were legitimate if they obstructed the exercise ofrights under "freedom of contract," therefore the Kansas statute was illogical. Consequently, the jailing of Coppage was improper when his conduct did notexceed legal limits.
Dissent Over "Freedom Of Contract"
Dissenting justices acceded that the concept of "freedom of contract" was under constitutional protection, but in certain circumstances was subject to restriction and control by a state, especially "in the interests of the public health, safety, and welfare." In Frisbie v. United States, the Court had ruled there was no absolute, unrestricted right to freedom of contract, therefore, contracts were subject to limitations to accommodate a public interest.
The dissenting justices did not believe that the Kansas law was so arbitraryas to be unconstitutional. Its statutory provisions did not prevent an employer from exercising the right to dismiss an employee. However, the justices believed non-union membership was an unacceptable reason to refuse continued employment or to be precondition for employment. Unlike the majority, the minority justices reasoned that the Adair case "dealt solely with the rightof an employer to terminate relations of employment with an employee, and involved constitutional protection of his right to do so, but did not deal withthe conditions which he might exact or impose upon another as a condition for employment."
The minority opinion viewed the Kansas statute as a legitimate effort to proscribe compulsive and coercive contracting requirements by preventing employers from making non-union membership a term of employment. The justices did notfeel both parties maintained contractual parity if an employer discharged anemployee for reasons which only the employer found satisfactory. The justices found difficulty in believing that the options Coppage presented to Hedgesdid not imply elements of coercion. Thus, Kansas law did not surpass the "legitimate exercise of police power" because the state enacted statutory provisions which "put limitations upon the sacrifice of rights which one man may exact from another as a condition of employment."
Impact
The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Coppage v. Kansas was later invalidated by reforms in the New Deal era and subsequent legislative reorganizationof modern labor law by the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. As one of the final vestiges of unregulated employment practices during the industrial revolution, the Court majority held that Kansas inappropriately provided "penalty for coercing or influencing or making demands upon or requirements of employees, laborers." In essence, the Court ruled that employees could not belong to any organization which advocated on their behalf working conditions without approval of an employer. However, within two decades, political and social pressures were brought on by social disillusionment with corporate Americaafter the economic trauma of the stock market crash in 1929, and the pervasive depression which followed. Reasoning that unregulated exploitation could nolonger be justified by false economic prosperity, the government was forcedto reconsider the meaning of appropriate employer/employee relations.
Related Cases
Yellow-Dog Contracts
With the growth of labor unions in the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, employers looked for ways to hire lower-wage workers. One of the more successful methods employers used was having potential employees signcontracts declaring that they were not presently union members and that theywould not become union members, or what became known as yellow-dog contracts.
Although some states had laws that prohibited employers from forcing employees to sign yellow dog contracts, in 1915 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down such state laws as unconstitutional, arguing that they obstructed the freedom of contract of both employers and employees. However, Congress passed the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932 that prohibited yellow-dog contracts. The Norris-LaGuardia Act strengthened the position of labor unions and its policies becamethe standard means for resolving labor disputes in following years.
Sources
West's Encyclopedia of American Law. Minneapolis, Minnesota: West Publishing, 1998.
T. B. Coppage
Appellee
State of Kansas
Appellant's Claim
Kansas statute prohibiting "yellow dog contracts" did not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Chief Lawyers for Appellant
R. R. Vermilon, W. F. Evans
Chief Lawyers for Appellee
John S. Dawson, Attorney General of Kansas; J. I. Sheppard
Justices for the Court
Joseph Rucker Lamar, Joseph McKenna, James Clark McReynolds, Mahlon Pitney (writing for the Court), Willis Van Devanter, Edward Douglass White
Justices Dissenting
William Rufus Day, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Evans Hughes
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
25 January 1915
Decision
The Kansas statute, which outlawed yellow dog contracts, was an invalid and repressive infringement of an employer's right to engage in "freedom of contract" under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Significance
This decision of the U.S. Supreme Court enjoined the state of Kansas from enforcing an act banning "yellow dog contracts" The U.S. Supreme Court reasonedthat existence of such laws were inconsistent with "freedom of contract" provisions guaranteed under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In overruling the lower court's decision to sustain the appellant's conviction, the justices expressed that inequalities between employers and employees were not sufficient to allow statutory provisions to restrict the right of an employer to enter into a free and binding contract. This ruling reflected thelast breath of an American industrial revolution which tended to privilege employer's rights over those of labor.
The state of Kansas passed an act in 1903 which prevented employers from stopping employees from joining labor unions as a condition of employment. The main provisions of the Kansas statute were in two parts. The first specificallyprohibited companies from any action that would "coerce, require, demand, orinfluence any person or persons to enter into any agreement, either writtenor verbal, not to join or become or remain a member of any labor organizationor association, as a condition of such person or persons securing employment, or continuing in the employment." The second part stipulated that any member of a firm who violated the statutory provisions of the first provision of the statute would be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined by an amount not less than $50 or imprisoned no less than 30 days.
In the summer of 1911, Hedges, an employee of the St. Louis & San Francisco Railway Company (Frisco Lines), was required to sign a written agreement presented to him by T. B. Coppage (superintendent of Frisco Lines), wherein heagreed to relinquish membership in his labor union if he wanted to retain his job. Hedges, however, did not want to withdraw from the union so he was discharged. Coppage, was charged in a Kansas court and found guilty of preventing his employee from membership in a union. He was ordered to pay a fine or goto jail. Coppage appealed his conviction to the Kansas State Supreme Court.Nevertheless, the judgment of the lower court was affirmed; the Kansas StateSupreme Court concluded that Kansas law prohibiting yellow dog contracts wasconstitutional.
Employers' Rights Upheld
The U.S. Supreme Court overruled the judgment of the lower courts. The majority did not find any element of pressure or duress in the appellant's actions.The justices considered Coppage's act an appropriate exercise of employer rights under Fourteenth Amendment provisions regarding "freedom of contract." They found that Hedges was not coerced when he was asked to sign a contract containing provisions to which he was not willing to accede. The Court believedhe had opportunity to decide and choose whether to withdraw from membershipin his union or remain in the service of his employer. The Court reasoned that requirements presented to Hedges by the representative of the railway company (Coppage) were not unconstitutional and that no coercion was evident because Hedges had opportunity to "exercise a voluntary choice."
In a comparable, related case, Adair v. United States (1908), a yellowdog contract was held as being constitutionally legal under what the justices viewed as being an issue of "freedom of contract" despite legislation passed by Congress which were aimed at prohibition of such practices. Justice Pitney, in writing for the majority, maintained that
under constitutional freedom of contract, whatever either party has the right to treat as sufficient ground for terminating the employment, where there is no stipulationon the subject, he has the right to provide against by insisting that a stipulation respecting it shall be a sine qua non of the inception of the employment, or of its continuance if it be terminable at will.
The Court reasoned that, as in Adair, there had to be an equal balancebetween employer and employee rights. As in Adair, justices chose toprivilege an employer's property rights and due process rights under the Fifth Amendment. The Court rationalized that if it was unconstitutional for the government "to deprive an employer of liberty and property for threatening anemployee with loss of employment, or discriminating him (the employee) because of his membership in a labor organization," then it was equally illegal forstates to "similarly punish an employer for requiring his employee, as a condition of securing or retaining employment, to agree not to become or remaina member of such an organization while so employed." (Clearly, the 1915 Court, under Chief Justice White, was at odds with the slow, eventual movement oflegislators towards legislation which would eventually proscribe yellow dog contracts.)
Concluding that the notion of an employer's right to "freedom of contract" was sufficient to justify Coppage's actions (on behalf of his company), the majority felt that Kansas's yellow dog legislation was "arbitrary" and infringedon the equal rights of companies. The law was an inappropriate "exercise ofthe police power of the state." The justices did not feel that the appellanthad exercised compulsory influence and thus, his actions did not represent aviolation of law. The justices for the majority did not deny that states weregranted the right to exercise police power to prohibit potential coercive requirements in contracts between employers and employees. But they could not accept the findings of lower courts that (as an authorized representative of his company) Coppage's action should be treated as criminal and punishable when he offered Hedges, without "undue influence," an option to remain in the employ of Frisco Lines or leave, and Coppage left Hedges free to make a decision.
The Court reasoned that the Kansas statute prohibiting yellow dog contracts represented an unfair requirement on employers when negotiating a contract with employees. Due process provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment safeguarded "liberty," "property", and "freedom of contracting." Justices reasoned that "inequalities of fortune" were legal and recognizable as a natural process of negotiating and making contracts. Thus, the Court viewed Kansas law as an indirect attempt to overthrow such inherent inequities without recognizing the existence of an employer's constitutional guarantees that safeguarded company interests.
The majority justices posited that the Kansas law was not properly legislatedbecause it infringed on an employer's right to make contracts favoring the interests of the employer's company. The Court believed Kansas statute outlawed the "exercise of personal liberty and property rights" and represented an inappropriate application of the state's police power. Further, under the Fourteenth Amendment, an employer's contracting rights were abridged because thestatute denied an employer the opportunity to decide whether membership in alabor organization was an acceptable condition of employment. Characterizingthe relationship between employer and employee as a "voluntary relationship,"the Court found inappropriate legislation that characterized as criminal conduct an employer's prescription of terms under which an employee could continue relations with his employee.
The justices pointed out that freedom of choice was equal for both parties (for the employer to employ a laborer who met its needs, and for the laborer tochoose whether to relinquish union membership in order to remain employed.)Offering an employee such an option could not be characterized as deprivationof any constitutional freedom. Both parties were free to "say no" if not satisfied with terms of employment; thus, as a part of the process of equal bargaining, conditions of employment did not have to be regarded as unlawful or coercive if an employer's requirements legitimately exercised his right to "freedom of contract." The majority justices were persistent and clear that no "legislative restrictions" were legitimate if they obstructed the exercise ofrights under "freedom of contract," therefore the Kansas statute was illogical. Consequently, the jailing of Coppage was improper when his conduct did notexceed legal limits.
Dissent Over "Freedom Of Contract"
Dissenting justices acceded that the concept of "freedom of contract" was under constitutional protection, but in certain circumstances was subject to restriction and control by a state, especially "in the interests of the public health, safety, and welfare." In Frisbie v. United States, the Court had ruled there was no absolute, unrestricted right to freedom of contract, therefore, contracts were subject to limitations to accommodate a public interest.
The dissenting justices did not believe that the Kansas law was so arbitraryas to be unconstitutional. Its statutory provisions did not prevent an employer from exercising the right to dismiss an employee. However, the justices believed non-union membership was an unacceptable reason to refuse continued employment or to be precondition for employment. Unlike the majority, the minority justices reasoned that the Adair case "dealt solely with the rightof an employer to terminate relations of employment with an employee, and involved constitutional protection of his right to do so, but did not deal withthe conditions which he might exact or impose upon another as a condition for employment."
The minority opinion viewed the Kansas statute as a legitimate effort to proscribe compulsive and coercive contracting requirements by preventing employers from making non-union membership a term of employment. The justices did notfeel both parties maintained contractual parity if an employer discharged anemployee for reasons which only the employer found satisfactory. The justices found difficulty in believing that the options Coppage presented to Hedgesdid not imply elements of coercion. Thus, Kansas law did not surpass the "legitimate exercise of police power" because the state enacted statutory provisions which "put limitations upon the sacrifice of rights which one man may exact from another as a condition of employment."
Impact
The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Coppage v. Kansas was later invalidated by reforms in the New Deal era and subsequent legislative reorganizationof modern labor law by the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. As one of the final vestiges of unregulated employment practices during the industrial revolution, the Court majority held that Kansas inappropriately provided "penalty for coercing or influencing or making demands upon or requirements of employees, laborers." In essence, the Court ruled that employees could not belong to any organization which advocated on their behalf working conditions without approval of an employer. However, within two decades, political and social pressures were brought on by social disillusionment with corporate Americaafter the economic trauma of the stock market crash in 1929, and the pervasive depression which followed. Reasoning that unregulated exploitation could nolonger be justified by false economic prosperity, the government was forcedto reconsider the meaning of appropriate employer/employee relations.
Related Cases
- Frisbie v. United States, 157 U.S. 160 (1895).
- Holden v. Hardy, 169 U.S. 366 (1898).
- Adair v. United States, 208 U.S. 161 (1908).
- Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co. v. McGuire, 219 U.S. 549 (1911).
Yellow-Dog Contracts
With the growth of labor unions in the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, employers looked for ways to hire lower-wage workers. One of the more successful methods employers used was having potential employees signcontracts declaring that they were not presently union members and that theywould not become union members, or what became known as yellow-dog contracts.
Although some states had laws that prohibited employers from forcing employees to sign yellow dog contracts, in 1915 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down such state laws as unconstitutional, arguing that they obstructed the freedom of contract of both employers and employees. However, Congress passed the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932 that prohibited yellow-dog contracts. The Norris-LaGuardia Act strengthened the position of labor unions and its policies becamethe standard means for resolving labor disputes in following years.
Sources
West's Encyclopedia of American Law. Minneapolis, Minnesota: West Publishing, 1998.
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