“Omak’s Minimum Pay Law Joan D’Arc”: Telling the Local Story of West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937)

Abstract

“Omak’s Minimum Pay Law Joan D’Arc”: Telling the Local Story of IVesf Coast Hotel k Parrish (1937) HELEN J. KNOWLES For three months during the late summer and early fall of 1933, Elsie Lee (nee Murray) worked as a part-time employee of the Cascadian Hotel in Wenatchee, a city of 11,000 nestled within the heart of the North Central region of Washington State. Bom in Kansas in 1899, Elsie moved to the Evergreen State in approximately 1930, by which time she was divorced from Roy Lee (whom she had married when she was fifteen) and had six children.1 Working as a chambermaid to support her large family, in 1933 Elsie (who was already a grandmother) initially received 22/2 cents per hour—with lunch provided; a raise later brought this up to 25 cents per hour (although, Elsie was now expected to provide her own lunch). The following year, when she married Ernest Parrish, she became a full­ time member of the hotel’s staff, working regularly until May 11, 1935.2 When she was discharged from her position, Ray W. Clark, the then-manager of the Cascadian, presented Elsie with a check for $17-the balance of wages owed; she refused to accept the money. Believing she was instead legally entitled to $216.19, she sought the legal services of Charles Burnham “C.B.” Conner. Working pro bono, this respected Wenatchee attorney and localjustice ofthe peace initiated a lawsuit on June 10, 1935 seeking to recover the amount of back wages his client was owed under the Washington State minimum wage law.3 The decision to seek legal aid was a bold and brave move by the former chambermaid. Built at a cost of $500,000, the ten-story hotel, an impressive mixture of Art Modeme and Beaux Art styles, was the tallest building in town. And in the short time since its completion (construction, which proceeded rapidly, began in 1929) it had quickly become a landmark institution in the area, and an important part of the social life of Wenatcheeites .4 And the law ofthe land was not on her side; the U.S. Supreme Court had repeatedly struck down minimum wage laws, holding 284 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY Bom in Kansas in 1899, Elsie Parrish married at age fifteen and worked as a chambermaid to support her six children. A thirty-seven-year-old grandmother at the time her case reached the Supreme Court, Parrish posed for the photographer of the Wenatchee Daily World, who captured her in 1937 at work as a chambermaid at the Jim Hill hotel in Omak, Washington. that they violated the freedom of employers and employees to dictate their own contractu­ al terms. Consequently, upon receipt of a summons from Conner, the West Coast Hotel Company—the operators of the Cascadian— responded by challenging the constitutionali­ ty of the Washington minimum wage law, certain that the precedents would lead to a judgment in its favor. However, seventy-five years ago, on March 29, 1937, when the Justices of the nation’s highest court an­ nounced their final decision in the case, a bare majority voted to uphold the Washington law. This decision in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish has been the subject of an immense scholarly outpouring—it is, as Julie Novkov observes, “the case that launched a thousand law review articles.”5 However, much of that literature focuses on “the switch in time that saved nine” label that commentators affixed to the Court’s judgment. Implicit in that errone­ ous appellation was a belief that, when confronted with President Roosevelt’s threat to attempt to reform the judiciary with the Judicial Reorganization Act, packing the Court with Justices more sympathetic to his New Deal agenda, Justice Owen J. Roberts reversed course and voted, with his more liberal colleagues, to uphold a law that was very similar to the New York statute that a majority (that included Roberts) of the Court struck down the previous summer.6 Numer­ ous scholars have demonstrated the short­ comings ofthe “switch in time” argument, but the label has stuck; it has become part of the historical folklore ofthe U.S...