Holden v. Hardy, 169 U.S. 366 (1898), is a US labor law case in which the US Supreme Court held a limitation on working time for miners and smelters as constitutional.

A few months later, Salt Lake County Sheriff Harvey Harden arrested Albert Holden, the owner of Old Jordan Mine, for breaking that law.

The Supreme Court, in a majority opinion by Henry Billings Brown, held the Utah law was a legitimate exercise of the police power since there was indeed a rational basis, supported by facts, for the legislature to believe particular work conditions were dangerous.

It distinguished the case from laws imposing universal maximum hour rules, which would be unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment: The legislature has also recognized the fact, which the experience of legislators in many states has corroborated, that the proprietors of these establishments and their operatives do not stand upon an equality, and that their interests are, to a certain extent, conflicting.

The former naturally desire to obtain as much labor as possible from their employees, while the latter are often induced by the fear of discharge to conform to regulations which their judgment, fairly exercised, would pronounce to be detrimental to their health or strength.