Supreme Court Rules Sunday “Blue” Laws Constitutional
“Blue” laws, or “Sunday Closing” laws, are statutes that prohibit commercial businesses from operating on Sunday or other religious holidays. In McGowan v. Maryland, decided this day, the Supreme Court declined to ban such laws as violating the Establishment of Religion Clause of the First Amendment.
The Court held that many such laws had a secular purpose, such as promoting a universal day of rest. Sunday-closing laws have largely disappeared from the U.S., primarily because of business interests seeking to operate on Sunday.
In the 1920s there were many controversies over Sunday Closing or “Blue Laws.” See January 2, 1921 (when it was revealed that only California and Oregon did not have any such law). On February 20, 1923 a minister told people to obey the Sunday Closing law or leave the country. And February 21, 1925 when the local Lord’s Day Alliance tried to get New York State to adopt a Sunday Closing Law.
The Court: “In the light of the evolution of our Sunday Closing Laws through the centuries, and of their more or less recent emphasis upon secular considerations, it is concluded that, as presently written and administered, most of them, at least, are of a secular rather than of a religious character, and that presently they bear no relationship to establishment of religion, as those words are used in the Constitution of the United States.”
Justice Douglas in dissent: “The First Amendment commands government to have no interest in theology or ritual; it admonishes government to be interested in allowing religious freedom to flourish — whether the result is to produce Catholics, Jews, or Protestants, or to turn the people toward the path of Buddha, or to end in a predominantly Moslem nation, or to produce in the long run atheists or agnostics. On matters of this kind government must be neutral.”
Learn about Sunday “Blue Laws.”
Read about the history of conflict over religion in American history: Steven Waldman, Sacred Liberty: America’s Long, Bloody, and Ongoing Struggle for Religious Freedom (2019)
Learn more about the Establishment Clause: Jeremy Gunn and John Witte, No Establishment of Religion: America’s Original Contribution to Religious Liberty (2012)
Learn about the history of “Blue Laws” in Washington State: http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=9057
And learn more at the First Amendment Center: http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/category/religion