The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees to every adult member of the community the right freely to contract.

A man or a woman may contract with an employer to work as many hours a day, or a night, for whatever wages, in whatever dangerous or unhealthful or menacing conditions, _unless_ "there is fair ground to say that there is material danger to the public health or safety, or to the health and safety of the employee, or to the general welfare...." This is the legal decision on which most protective legislation in the United States has been based.
Several years ago, in Illinois, a law providing an eight-hour day for women was declared unconstitutional because nobody's health or safety was endangered; and on the same grounds the same fate met a New York law forbidding all-night employment of women.
So Mr.Curt Muller and the laundrymen of Portland, Oregon, had reason to believe that they could attack the Oregon law.

The case was appealed, and appealed again, by the laundrymen, and finally reached the Supreme Court of the United States.

Then the Consumers' League took a hand.
The brief for the State of Oregon, "defendant in error," was prepared by Louis D.Brandeis, of Boston, assisted by Josephine Goldmark, one of the most effective workers in the League's New York headquarters.

This brief is probably one of the most remarkable legal documents in existence.