Chas. Wolff Packing Co. v. Court of Indus. Rel., 267 U.S. 552 (1925)

Chas. Wolff Packing Company v. Court of Industrial Relations

Nos. 207 & 299

Argued Nov. 20, 1924
Decided April 13, 1925
267 U.S. 552

ERROR TO THE SUPREME COURT

OF THE STATE OF KANSAS

Syllabus

1. When a judgment entered by a state court is modified by another entered after a rehearing, the second supersedes the first, and a writ of error to the second alone is proper for review in this Court. P. 561.

2. A decision of a state supreme court that provisions of a statute of the state are separable is conclusive on this Court in the case. P. 562.

3. A judgment of reversal is not necessarily an adjudication by the appellate court of any other than the questions in terms discussed and decided.

Held that the former decision of this Court in this case (262 U.S. 522) holding the Kansas Industrial Relations Act unconstitutional insofar as it permitted the fixing of wages in plaintiff in error’s packing plant, and reversing the judgment of the Kansas Supreme Court for that reason, was neither an adjudication that the entire act was invalid nor an adjudication that its provisions for fixing hours of labor were valid. P. 562.

4. The Industrial Relations Act of Kansas, which seeks to promote continuity of operation and production in the industries to which it relates by compelling employer and employees to submit their controversies to compulsory settlement by a state agency is, as applied to a manufacturer of food products, unconstitutional not only so far as it permits compulsory fixing of wages (as previously decided, 262 U.S. 522), but also, and for the same reasons, in the provision for compulsory fixing of hours of labor, since the compulsion in both these features alike is but part of a system by which the act seeks to compel owner and employees to continue in business on terms not of their own making, which infringes the rights of property and liberty of contract guaranteed by the due process of law clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. P. 563.

5. Whether a power conferred on a state agency to fix hours of labor would be valid if it were conferred independently, and made either general or applicable to all business of a particular class, is not considered. P. 569.

114 Kans. 304, 487, reversed.

Error to a judgment of the Supreme Court of Kansas entered, upon rehearing, after receipt of the mandate issued from this Court upon a previous reversal, 262 U.S. 522. The judgment awarded a mandamus to compel obedience to an order of the Kansas administrative agency called the Court of Industrial Relations insofar as it purported to fix the hours of labor and pay for over time in the meat packing plant of the plaintiff in error.