Allgeyer v. Louisiana, 165 U.S. 578 (1897), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which a unanimous court struck down a Louisiana statute for violating an individual's liberty of contract. It was the first case in which the Supreme Court interpreted the word liberty in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to mean economic liberty. The decision marked the beginning of the Lochner era, during which the Supreme Court struck many state regulations for infringing on an individual's right to contract. The Lochner era lasted forty years, until West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish was decided in 1937.
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