nd won on appeal, the company sought certiorari, based in part on Adkins and Morehead, which had declared minimum-wage statutes unconstitutional.
It may be said, in retrospect, that West Coast had every reason to expect that the Supreme Court would hold in its favor, against the minimum-wage-for-women statute in Washington, consistent with earlier precedent. This point was made in the decision.
What happened? Why did the Court's majority reverse Adkins and Morehead? What was different about the notion of minimum wage in statute or in the political climate that caused it to be an aspect of individual rather than corporate rights? The answers appear to lie not merely in the realm of constitutional law or the facts of Parrish, but in the realm of law as inflected by a social and political environment shifting in complex ways.
Douglas, anticipating the shift away from this position in his commentary, continues,
Beginning in the 1930's, the Court gradually desisted from using the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to defeat social legisl
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