beejay

OK, I'll bite. What's the secular purpose for prohibiting the sale of alcohol on SUNDAY.

You can't say "alcohol is bad", unless you can explain why it is worse when purchased on Sunday.

No secular purpose, in my opinion. Also, no secular purpose in prohibiting the sale of motor vehicles on Sunday in Indiana.

Toto

In fact, I think labor unions were behind keeping the Blue Laws on the books, just to keep one day of rest (or double overtime.)

Stephen Maturin

Blue laws are flagrantly unconstitutional. No ifs, ands or buts about it. Trouble is, you'll never get a court to say so, and their opinions are the only ones that actually count on issues constitutional law.

As a practical matter, though, this issue really doesn't mean much. As Toto rightly noted, these statutes are but a shadow of their former selves. Old style blue laws typically required businesses to close on Sunday. In most places, all that remains of those laws is Sunday alcohol sales restrictions. Statutes and local ordinances mandating business closure on any day never stood much of a chance against the inexorable movement toward subsuming everthing that used to be deemed part of "society" into The Economy(TM).

There are bigger and more important battles to fight anyway. Personally, I'd rather see a court compel removal of the Ten Commandments monument sitting on county property next to the sidewalk leading to the Lucas County (Ohio) Courthouse.

Peregrine

Many years ago, Kansas City (MO) did away with the ban on Sunday liquor sale. I worked at a pizza place, and on Sunday there would be a line at the door waiting for us to open (we did package liquor sales). 2/3 of out business on Sunday was package liquor.

beejay

Do you know if there has ever been a lawsuit on that issue? I think there is a Bill of Rights display near it...was that a settlement made in a previous lawsuit?

Would you file suit with the ACLU's help? (I'm assuming you live in the county and pass the monument frequently/occasionally?)

Shake

I've got to agree with Daggah to say that it's a stretch to call them unconstitutional. Archaic? Yes. Silly? Yes. Unconstitutional? No. My wife's hometown recently (within the last 5 years) stopped being a dry town, i.e. NO alcohol sales regardless of the day! (They also recently got their third stoplight!)

Daggah, you're in SC, what about Chick-Fil-A being closed on Sunday? That's a chain-wide thing, if memory serves. During my time in Charleston, the county abolished it's no Sunday alcohol sales ban by popular referendum. The people from the radio station who started the petition to get it on the ballot were amazed that it actually passed! They were merely hoping to get it on the ballot so maybe within a few years it would pass. Dorchester County (to the NW) still bans Sunday alcohol sales, though. The base where I was at was just a mile or two from the county line, so within minutes you could be at a store that wouldn't sell you beer, then drive about 1.5 miles and TA-DA! you could buy beer!

Some would argue that stores aren't losing any money on this since people can just get their liquor on Saturdays instead. Well, this is not completely true: one year when New Years' Eve fell on a Sunday, a bunch of us headed to the liquor store to get some bubbly, and they're of course closed, due to the stupid blue laws! Now, if there's one Sunday to be open it would be when a major holiday like that falls on a Sunday! Imagine your 4th of July party when you've underestimated how much alcohol you would need, and there's no place open (or that will sell you any) to buy alcohol!! <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> They (the stores) are definitely losing money in those cases!

I say get rid of 'em!

PS. for more stupid laws <a href="http://www.dumblaws.com" target="_blank">go here!</a>

Corwin

In both the states I've lived in so far... (oregon and washington) all liquor stores are state run. (We don't actually have private 'package' stores... when I visited the midwest was the first time I'd ever even heard of such a thing.)

So... IMHO the fact that liquor stores are closed would be unconstitutional, because the OLCC is a government organization.

It's sort of a moot issue now.... since I think oregon repealed that... but....

Seeker630

"Here in Georgia, you cannot even purchase a Beer on Sunday. What inspired these laws? Have they been challenged constitutionally? "

I live in Florida now, but lived in Michigan before May of this year. Both states have a law that says you can't buy alcohol before noon on Sundays. I think if you were to go back far enough, you'd find that the inspiration for such non-sense was purely religious. It dates to a time when the churches and clergy had more of a strangle-hold on politicians than they have now.

It is, of course, idiotic, in that it prevents no one from drinking on Sundays before noon--only from buying. If one wants to drink on Sunday there is nothing to stop them as they can just dip into the stuff they bought on Friday or Saturday, knowing that they can't buy before noon.

Politicians won't usually touch this issue on their own because they don't want any taint of supposed immorality attached to them at election time. They would have to oppose a lot of clergy on this one so they just let sleeping dogs lie. In this respect it's a lot like other old morals laws still on the books in some states dealing with sexual practices and so on.

Such laws really have become meaningless and totally ineffective regarding their original intended purposes--to sanctify the day of worship.

In addition--this points out the total hipocracy of religion when it comes to morality. When I was a boy the church (Catholic) taught me that gambling was one of the worst of all moral offenses--responsible for the breaking up of families and all the rest of it. Of course holding bingo parties to raise money for the parish was somehow different. The state and federal authorities spent years prosecuting bookies for taking bets on all sorts of sporting events, but if you call it the "Lotto", and the state gets a cut of the action it is somehow transformed into something beneficial.

How is it good that I can buy a Lottery ticket and compete with millions of other people for the same prize and have society consider it good, but if I buy into a football pool at work among fellow employees where the odds are far higher that I might win I can get into trouble legally?


Muslims supposedly don't drink alcohol, but they had no compunction about buying up every gas station and party store in town where I used to live in Michigan and make one helluva profit selling it to others.

Morality really is manufactured by humankind within their various societies. There is absolutely nothing "divine" about it.

Stephen Maturin

I'm still trying to run down all the details, beejay, but I suspect that there was some sort of settlement reached (with or without litigation). As I understand it, the Bill of Rights monument is there at the ACLU's behest.

I'm there at least three times a week. [I file almost all of my cases in that court.] I could file and prosecute such a lawsuit on my own, but the folks I'm in practice with would never go for it. They don't mind me getting involved with out-of-county CSS cases, but they want me to steer clear of in-county activism of this sort. It's probably a moot point anyhoo, since it's beginning to look like this particular battle has already been waged and compromised.

Shake

See the link in my previous post on this thread.