William O. Douglas

“ Missouri has a statute, Mo.Rev.Stat., 1949, § 129.060, V.A.M.S., first enacted in 1897, which was designed to end the coercion of employees by employers in the exercise of the franchise. It provides that an employee may absent himself from his employment for four hours between the opining and closing of the polls without penalty, and that any employer who among other things deducts wages for that absence is guilty of a misdemeanor. ”

“ It is designed to eliminate any penalty for exercising the right of suffrage and to remove a practical obstacle to getting out the vote. The public welfare is a broad and inclusive concept. The moral, social, economic, and physical well-being of the community is one part of it ”

“ Most regulations of business necessarily impose financial burdens on the enterprise for which no compensation is paid. Those are part of the costs of our civilization. Extreme cases are conjured up where an employer is required to pay wages for a period that has no relation to the legitimate end. ”

“ But the state legislatures hve constitutional authority to experiment with new techniques; they are entitled to their own standard of the public welfare; they may within extremely broad limits control practices in the business-labor field, so long as specific constitutional prohibitions are not violated and so long as conflicts with valid and controlling federal laws are avoided. ”

“ Appellant is a Missouri corporation doing business in St. Louis. November 5, 1946, was a day for general elections in Missouri, the polls being open from 6 A.M. to 7 P.M. One Grotemeyer, an employee of appellant, was on a shift that worked from 8 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. each day, with thirty minutes for lunch. His rate of pay was $1.60 an hour. ”

“ The classification of voters so as to free employees from the domination of employers is an attempt to deal with an evil to which the one group has been exposed. The need for that classification is a matter for legislative judgment, American Federation of Labor v. ”