In the 1928 case of Lawrence et al. v. St. Louis-San Francisco Railway Company, the U.S Supreme Court ruled in favor of the railway company, dismissing a claim made by employees for overtime compensation under the Federal Employers' Liability Act (FELA). The plaintiffs were part-time workers who claimed they should be paid at an overtime rate for hours worked beyond eight in a day, even though their total weekly hours did not exceed forty. However, FELA only mandated that employers pay time-and-a-half to those working over forty hours per week and did not specify any daily limit on work without additional pay. Therefore, since these employees had not exceeded this weekly threshold despite sometimes working more than eight hours per day, they were not entitled to receive overtime wages according to federal law.

In the dissenting opinion for Lawrence et al. v. St. Louis-San Francisco Railway Company, Justice Stone argued that the majority's decision was inconsistent with previous rulings of the Court and failed to consider important aspects of interstate commerce law. He contended that a state has no power to regulate rates charged by an interstate carrier for services performed entirely outside its borders, even if those services are part of a continuous transportation within its territory. Furthermore, he believed that it is not within a state's authority to determine what constitutes reasonable compensation for such services or how they should be apportioned between different parts of an interstate journey; these matters fall under federal jurisdiction according to existing legislation and precedent cases on this subject matter.