Other Sources I Am Using For my Paper Part III

Another major source I will be using for the paper will be the 1937 Supreme Court case of West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish. The court case dealt with a woman challenging her employer over not receiving minimum wage under Washington state law. The Supreme Court case decided that the Washington state law was constitutional, setting a precedent for the legality of minimum wage laws. The court case is important to paper because around the time the decision was given FDR was trying to appoint more justices to the Supreme Court, since they had previously ruled against Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation. The decision in the case represented a dramatic reversal in the Court’s decision making in regards to New Deal laws. The swing vote in the case was Justice Owen J. Roberts, who had previously decided against New Deal legislation in previous cases. Some historians have claimed that the decision in Parrish was made in order to prevent Roosevelt from “packing” the court and threating the integrity of the Supreme Court. Regardless of the reasons behind the decision the case represented a major paradigm shift in the way the Supreme Court handled New Deal legislation from that point on.

Associate Justice Owen Roberts