Williamson v. Lee Optical Co.

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Williamson v. Lee Optical Co.

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued March 2, 1955
Decided March 28, 1955

Full case name:	Mac Q. Williamson, Attorney General of Oklahoma, et al. v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, Incorporated, et al.

Citations:	348 U.S. 483; 75 S. Ct. 461; 99 L. Ed. 563; 1955 U.S. LEXIS 1003

Prior history:	Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma

Holding

The Court held that state laws regulating business will only be subject to rational basis review, and that the Court need not contemplate all possible reasons for legislation.

Court membership

Chief Justice: Earl Warren
Associate Justices: Hugo Black, Stanley Forman Reed, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, Harold Hitz Burton, Tom C. Clark, Sherman Minton, John Marshall Harlan II

Case opinions

Majority by: Douglas
Joined by: unanimous
Harlan took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

Williamson v. Lee Optical Co., 348 U.S. 483 (1955),^[1] was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that state laws regulating business will only be subject to rational basis review, and that the Court need not contemplate all possible reasons for legislation.

1 Facts
2 Procedural Posture
3 The Decision
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Facts

The optician plaintiff brought suit to have a 1953 Oklahoma law declared unconstitutional and to enjoin state officials from enforcing it. The law at issue (59 Okla. Stat. Ann. §§ 941-947, Okla. Laws 1953, c. 13, §§ 2-8) contained provisions making it unlawful for any person not a licensed optometrist or ophthalmologist to fit lenses to a face or to duplicate or replace into frames lenses or other optical appliances, except upon written prescriptive authority of an Oklahoma licensed ophthalmologist or optometrist. This law required every individual seeking to have eye glasses made, repaired, or refitted to obtain a prescription. This jeopardized the profitability and even the survival of Oklahoma opticians.

[edit] Procedural Posture

The District Court ruled that portions of §§ 2,3, and 4 of the Act violated the Due Process Clause of the Constitution and that portions of § 3 of the Act violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

[edit] The Decision

Justice Douglas, writing for the Court, articulates the standard for determining whether the law survives a Due Process challenge, stating "...the law need not be in every respect logically consistent with its aims to be constitutional. It is enough that there is an evil at hand for correction, and that it might be thought that the particular legislative measure was a rational way to correct it."

According to Justice Douglas, “The day is gone when this court uses the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to strike down state laws, regulatory of business and industrial conditions, because they may be unwise, improvident, or out of harmony with a particular school of thought.”

The Court summarily addresses the Equal Protection issue in this case, explaining "The prohibition of the Equal Protection Clause goes no further than invidious discrimination. We cannot say that this point has been reached here.”