[central_va]

In 1933, the Roosevelt administration during the New Deal made the first attempt at establishing a national minimum wage regiment with the National Industrial Recovery Act, which set minimum wage and maximum hours on an industry and regional basis. The Supreme Court, however, in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935) ruled the act unconstitutional, and the minimum wage regulations were abolished.[32] Two years later after President Roosevelt's overwhelming reelection in 1936 and discussion of judicial reform, the Supreme Court took up the issue of labor legislation again in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937) and upheld the constitutionality of minimum wage legislation enacted by Washington state and overturned the Adkins decision which marked the end of the Lochner era.[33] In 1938, the minimum wage was re-established pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act, this time at a uniform rate of $0.25 per hour (equivalent to $4.45 in 2018). The Supreme Court upheld the Fair Labor Standards Act in United States v. Darby Lumber Co. (1941), holding that Congress had the power under the Commerce Clause to regulate employment conditions.[34]

The 1938 minimum wage law only applied to "employees engaged in interstate commerce or in the production of goods for interstate commerce," but in amendments in 1961 and 1966, the federal minimum wage was extended (with slightly different rates) to employees in large retail and service enterprises, local transportation and construction, state and local government employees, as well as other smaller expansions; a grandfather clause in 1990 drew most employees into the purview of federal minimum wage policy, which now set the wage at $3.80.[35]

[Rurudyne]

There is no delegated power given the federal to set a minimum wage law that would be applicable anywhere within the jurisdiction of a State. The 10th Amendment therefore forbids them.

Nor is there a power to regulate things which merely affect commerce between the States but are not in fact actually commerce between the States.

Moreover the commerce clause, what was actually agreed to when the Constitution was ratified, was only about using federal power to prevent the States from using their authority to interfere with interstate commerce. It had nothing to do with what private persons did on their own when choosing to engage in commerce.

The 1930s was the decade the Constitution was kicked to the curb by a lawless Court. Progressives, lovers of Arbitrary government, have only built on that.