Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., dissenting
of D. C., 261 U. S. 525 (1923), and a whole line of cases beginning with Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S. 45 (1905). Adkins had found a state minimum-wage law unconstitutional because, in the Court's view, the law interfered with a constitutional right to contract. 261 U. S., at 554-555. But then the Great Depression hit, bringing with it unparalleled economic despair. The experience undermined—in fact, it disproved—Adkins's assumption that a wholly unregulated market could meet basic human needs. As Justice Jackson (before becoming a Justice) wrote of that time: "The older world of laissez faire was recognized everywhere outside the Court to be dead." The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy 85 (1941). In West Coast Hotel, the Court caught up, recognizing through the lens of experience the flaws of existing legal doctrine. See also ante, at 11 (Roberts, C. J., concurring in judgment). The havoc the Depression had worked on ordinary Americans, the Court noted, was "common knowledge through the length and breadth of the land." 300 U. S., at 399. The laissez-faire approach had led to "the exploiting of workers at wages so low as to be insufficient to meet the bare cost of living." Ibid. And since Adkins was decided, the law had also changed. In several decisions, the Court had started to recognize the power of States to implement economic policies designed to enhance their citizens' economic well-being. See, e.g., Nebbia v. New York, 291 U. S. 502 (1934); O'Gorman & Young, Inc. v. Hartford Fire Ins. Co., 282 U. S. 251 (1931). The statements in those decisions, West Coast Hotel explained, were "impossible to reconcile" with Adkins. 300 U. S., at 398. There was no escaping the need for Adkins to go.
Brown v. Board of Education overruled Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537 (1896), along with its doctrine of "separate but equal." By 1954, decades of Jim Crow had made clear what Plessy's turn of phrase actually meant: "inherent[] [in]equal [ity]." Brown, 347 U. S., at 495. Segregation
