Charles Evans Hughes

“ On final hearing, the complainants made an offer to prove that 'all the allegations of fact set forth in the bill were true; that the fact that a woman was a graduate nurse merely showed that she had completed a course of study for the treatment of the sick, but that the course of study which a woman must take for that purpose was not prescribed by law or fixed by custom, but was such as any hospital or training school might, in the discretion of its governing officers, see fit to prescribe ”

“ For it appears that these persons, upon whom rests the burden of immediate attendance upon, and nursing of, the patients in the hospital, are also pupils engaged in a course of study, and the propriety of legislative protection of women undergoing such a discipline is not open to question. ”

“ As to liberty of contract.-The gravamen of the bill is with respect to the complainant Nelson, a graduate pharmacist, and the student nurses. As to the former,-it appears that a statute of California limits the hours of labor of pharmacists to ten hours a day and sixty hours a week. Stat. (Cal.) 1905, p. 28. In view of the nature of their work, and the extreme importance to the public that it should not be performed by those who are suffering from overfatigue, there can be no doubt as to the legislative power reasonably to limit the hours of labor in that occupation. ”

“ As to the equal protection of the laws.-The argument in this aspect of the case is especially addressed to the exception of 'graduate nurses.' The contention is that they are placed 'on one side of the line, and doctors, surgeons, pharmacists, experienced nurses and student nurses and all other hospital employees on the other side of the line.' So far as women doctors and surgeons are concerned, the question is merely an abstract one, as no such question is presented by the allegations of the bill with regard to the complainant hospital. ”

“ This practical work, also, is in many of its aspects unusually exacting and fatiguing; much of it is done while standing, bending, or lifting; much of it is done under pressure of time and nervous tension, and to a considerable degree the physical effort which the student must make is accompanied by mental anxiety and definite, often grave, responsibility. ”

“ It should further be said, aside from the propriety of classification of women in hospitals with respect to the general conditions there obtaining (Louisville & N. R. Co. v. Melton, 218 U.S. 36, 53, 54, 54 L. ed. 921, 928, 929, 47 L.R.A. (N.S.) 84, 30 Sup. Ct. Rep. 676) , that the bill wholly fails to show as to the employment of any of these persons any such injury-actual or threatened-as would warrant resort to a court of equity to enjoin the enforcement of the law. ”