An Oklahoma law required contractors on state work to pay at least “the current rate of per diem wages in the locality where the work is performed.” The penalties were heavy and charged by the day. General Construction Company, which was building bridges for the state, went to court to stop the law from being enforced against it.
On January 4, 1926, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed. It ruled that “a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application violates the first essential of due process of law.”
The Court found “a double uncertainty.” A current wage rate is really a range of rates. Whether a place lay within the “locality” would also depend on “the probably varying impressions of juries.”