State v. Goodwill State v. Minor

Summary

In consolidated writs of error, the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia held that section 3 of chapter 63, Acts 1887 — forbidding persons, firms, and corporations engaged in mining or manufacturing to issue for the payment of labor any order or paper unless redeemable in lawful money on specified terms — is unconstitutional and void. The court reasoned that the act is class legislation: it singles out mine owners and manufacturers and prohibits them from making contracts that other employers of labor remain free to make, a discrimination unsupported by any public necessity and unsustainable as an exercise of the police power. Liberty and the right to contract concerning labor, the court held, are property protected by the Fourteenth Amendment and article III, section 1 of the state constitution, and the police power must be exercised in subordination to those guarantees. Because a void statute can support no valid indictment, the judgments of the Circuit Courts of Mercer and Fayette counties were reversed and the defendants discharged.