In the 1944 case Walling v. Harnischfeger Corporation, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Walling, who represented the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor. The court found that Harnischfeger Corporation had violated provisions under Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by not paying its employees overtime for hours worked beyond a standard workweek period. The company argued that their workers were engaged in producing goods for commerce or involved in activities closely related and directly essential to such production; hence they should be exempted from FLSA's wage-and-hour requirements as per Section 7(a). However, this argument was rejected by the court stating that these exemptions are narrow and limited only to those situations where Congress has clearly indicated an intent to exclude certain types of employees from coverage.

In the dissenting opinion for Walling v. Harnischfeger Corporation, Justice Frankfurter argued that the majority's interpretation of "produced" in the Fair Labor Standards Act was too broad and inconsistent with Congressional intent. He contended that Congress intended to regulate only those activities directly related to actual physical production, not all activities remotely connected to commerce. In his view, maintenance work performed on machinery used in manufacturing did not constitute 'production' under this definition because it didn't involve creating a new product or commodity but merely maintaining existing equipment. Thus, he believed such workers should be exempt from wage and hour regulations under FLSA as they were not engaged in 'production'. His concern was that by extending coverage so broadly, it would lead to an unwarranted expansion of federal power over local affairs which could potentially undermine state authority and autonomy.