In Williamson v. Lee Optical Co. (1955) the Supreme Court ruled that state laws regulating business are subject to only rational basis review and that the Court need not contemplate all possible reasons for legislation. Two years earlier, Oklahoma had passed a law forbidding persons without an optometrist or opthalmoloist's license to fit eyeglass lenses or duplicate or replace eyeglass lenses into a frame. Anyone attempting to have eyeglasses made, repaired, or refitted must have a prescription. The law had a practical negative effect on unlicensed opticians, but it exempted sellers of ready-to-wear eyeglasses. It was thus challenged on equal protection grounds as well as on due process grounds for arbitrary interference with an optician's right to do business.A US district judge in Oklahoma City ruled that the state law violated the 14th Amendment. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously that it did not violate equal protection. Justice William O. Douglas wrote the opinion in which he said that Oklahoma had a legitimate state interest in requiring properly licensed eye doctors to administer eyeglass prescriptions; although an optician needn't need a prescription to fit a lense, mandating prescriptions in all cases would necessitate the patient to obtain an eye exam and possibly diagnose a heretofore unknown medical problem. As such, the law had a legitimate interest behind it.
The Court further held that there was no Equal Protection violation because legislatures were permitted to deal with problems "one step at a time, addressing itself to the phase of the problem which seems most acute to the legislative mind." Thus, that opticians were so impacted while sellers of ready-to-wear glasses were exempted may have been a signal that the sellers did not represent a portion of the problem that loomed large in the legislature's mind.Douglas added that the Lochner v. New York doctrine whereby the Court could use the 14th Amendment to strike down a state regulatory law based on abstract theories was obsolete and that the amendment as interpreted by the present Court applied solely to discrimination against individuals.
>>18325738Limiting the 14th like that seems contrary to corporate personhood.
>>18325738Lochner genuinely used some moon logic. Of course I won't say the Warren Court also didn't make rulings based on moon logic of a different sort.
>>18326354What really gets my goat about Lochner is that only a few years before it the supreme court had struck down a similar federal law, saying this violated the tenth amendment and such general economic regulation needed to be legislated by the states. Then when a state did it they said it violated "freedom to contract" which all of a sudden they thought the 14th amendment protected, even though that appears nowhere in it. The court were just representing the interests of big business and legislating from the bench. Nothing more.
>>18326414In those days the railroads were widely seen as the most greedy and malevolent of all businesses they were the Google or Amazon of the 1890s. States would try to regulate them especially the abusive practices with overcharging for shipping of goods on their cars, but the railroads would shop it to a judge they owned who would promptly rule that states cannot regulate them under the commerce clause and only Congress was allowed to do that.
>>18326354That particular case was based on the contract clause, but the Fuller Court misunderstood that it was a one-time deal to handle a specific problem back when the Constitution was drafted. Basically, the Founders wanted to bar states from nullifying people's debts to banks to ensure the solvency of the infant nation's financial system.
>>18326438>That particular case was based on the contract clauseno it wasn't, it's based on the 14th amendment.
>>18325735>As such, the law had a legitimate interest behind it.the state protecting the stupid from themselves is not a legitimate interest except in the mind of the fanatic etatist.
>>18326676It's generally good to not kill off your taxpayer base.
