In the 1926 case Tyson and Brother - United Theatre Ticket Offices, Inc. v. Banton, District Attorney et al., the U.S Supreme Court ruled on a dispute involving theater ticket sales in New York City. The plaintiffs were ticket brokers who challenged a state law that limited the price they could charge for reselling theater tickets to fifty cents above face value. They argued this violated their Fourteenth Amendment rights by depriving them of property without due process of law and denying them equal protection under the laws. However, the court upheld New York's regulation as constitutional, ruling it was within its police power to regulate businesses affecting public interest or convenience such as theatre performances which are not purely private enterprises but quasi-public institutions subject to governmental control for public welfare purposes.

In the dissenting opinion for Tyson and Brother v. Banton, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., joined by Justices Louis Brandeis and Harlan Fiske Stone, argued that the majority's decision to strike down a New York law regulating theater ticket prices was an overreach of judicial power. They contended that it should be up to state legislatures, not courts, to determine economic policy. The justices believed that if a legislature deemed such regulations necessary for public welfare or preventing frauds then it is within their constitutional rights unless there are clear violations of specific prohibitions in the Constitution itself. They also disagreed with the majority's interpretation of liberty under Fourteenth Amendment due process clause as including freedom from price controls; they saw this as an unwarranted extension of substantive due process doctrine into realm of economic regulation where it had no place.