 In the 1908 case "Muller v. Oregon" the Supreme Court upheld a decision limiting women to 10-hour workdays based on the idea that "performance of maternal functions" made women inherently incapable of the same work that men did.In the 1950s and 1960s laws in several states prohibited women from working and banned their hiring for some length of time before and after delivery.In 1971 "Reed v. Reed" became the first Supreme Court decision to invoke the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to protect women from discrimination on the basis of sex.