Blue law
Blue laws commonly ban certain business and recreational activities on Sundays, and impose restrictions on the retail sale of hard goods and consumables, particularly alcoholic beverages.
[1][2] The laws also place limitations on a range of other endeavors—including travel, fashions, hunting, professional sports, stage performances, movie showings, and gambling.
[3][4] While less prevalent today, blue laws continue to be enforced in parts of the United States and Canada as well as in European countries, such as Austria, Germany, Norway, and Poland, where most stores are required to close on Sundays.
[3][5][6][7][8] In the United States, the Supreme Court has upheld blue laws as constitutional despite their religious origins if supported by secular justifications.
In response, state legislators have re-enacted certain Sunday laws to satisfy the rulings while allowing some of the other statutes to remain on the books with no intention to enforce them.
[11][failed verification] The Roman Emperor Constantine promulgated the first known law regarding prohibition of Sunday labour for apparent religion-associated reasons in A.D. 321: On the venerable Day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed.The earliest laws in North America addressing Sunday activities and public behavior were enacted in the Jamestown Colony in 1619 by the first General Assembly of Virginia.
[14] In his 1781 book General History of Connecticut, the Reverend Samuel Peters (1735–1826) used the phrase to describe numerous laws adopted by 17th-century Puritans that prohibited various activities on Sunday, recreational as well as commercial.
According to a Time magazine editorial in 1961, the year the Supreme Court heard four cases on the issue, the color blue came to be associated with colonial laws in opposition to the red emblem of British royalty.
Numerous Americans were arrested for working, keeping an open shop, drinking alcohol, traveling, and engaging in recreational activities on Sundays.
Erwin Fahlbusch and Geoffrey William Bromiley write that throughout their existence, organizations advocating first-day Sabbatarianism, such as the Lord's Day Alliance in North America and the Lord's Day Observance Society in the British Isles, were supported by labor unions in lobbying "to prevent secular and commercial interests from hampering freedom of worship and from exploiting workers".
[19] In Canada, the Ligue du Dimanche, a Roman Catholic Sunday league, supported the Lord's Day Act in 1923 and promoted first-day Sabbatarian legislation.
[20][failed verification][21] Beginning in the 1840s, workers, Jews, Seventh Day Baptists, freethinkers, and other groups began to organize opposition.
[22] On the other hand, the more recent Dies Domini, written by Pope John Paul II in 1998, advocates Sunday legislation in that it protects civil servants and workers; the North Dakota Catholic Conference in 2011 likewise maintained that blue laws, in accordance with the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, "ensure that, for reasons of economic productivity, citizens are not denied time for rest and divine worship".
[23] Similarly, Chief Justice Earl Warren, while recognizing the partial religious origin of blue laws, acknowledged the "secular purpose they served by providing a benefit to workers at the same time that they enhanced labor productivity".
It forbids public festivities on a Sunday before 13:00, as well as making noise that carries farther than 200 metres (220 yd), but activities that are unlikely to disturb church services are exempt.
[33] Since 2007, blue laws were enacted and resulted in stores closing on the 13 state holidays in Poland – these are both religious and secular days of rest.
In 2014, an initiative by the Law and Justice party failed to pass the reading in the Sejm to ban trading on Sundays and state holidays.
[39] In 1896, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Johnson Field, opined with regard to Sunday blue laws:[39] Its requirement is a cessation from labor.
In its enactment, the legislature has given the sanction of law to a rule of conduct, which the entire civilized world recognizes as essential to the physical and moral well-being of society.
In Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, New Jersey, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, car dealerships continue to operate under blue-law prohibitions in which an automobile may not be purchased or traded on a Sunday.
These wide-ranging effects cannot easily be pinpointed to specific causes, but one of the latter study's authors, Daniel Hungerman, suggested to Christianity Today that blue laws might have been fulfilling their original intent, to keep people pious.
[24] In March 2006, Texas judges upheld the state blue law that requires car dealerships to close either Saturday or Sunday each weekend.
Green: Large supermarkets and shopping centers are generally open on Sundays.
Blue: Large supermarkets are allowed to be open for no more than 6 hours on Sundays.
Red: Large supermarkets are generally closed on Sundays.
