Laws meant to protect the Sabbath have been around for centuries, enforcing religious values but threatening business success.
It was a Sunday morning back in 2003. Sean Hildebrand, a college student in Delaware at the time, woke up slowly. As he started moving around, he remembered his friends would be coming over later that night to watch a game. But, he didn’t have beer. He hustled to get ready, grabbed his keys, and drove to the Maryland border.
Because it was a Sunday in Delaware, a blue law prohibited the sale of alcohol there. Blue laws are essentially meant to prevent people from doing things that could keep them from worship, according to Ohio History Central. Until recently, a blue law similar to the one Hildebrand faced prevented Sunday alcohol sales in Indiana, and laws forbidding Sunday vehicle sales are still enforced.
Blue laws have been used in the United States since the colonial times. The most common blue laws are those keeping businesses from selling alcohol on Sundays. Hildebrand, now an assistant professor of political science at Ball State University, described how it used to be that even major retail stores unrelated to alcohol were closed on Sundays. While some states have become more lenient with these laws, the rules still stand firm in other areas of the country.
“There’s still major Christian influence throughout our system of government, as much as we say ‘separation of church and state,’” Hildebrand says. “It’s been there for 230 years. It’s not like it’s just going to disappear.”
William Stutz, a manager at Friendly Package Liquors in Yorktown, says America has always had a love-hate relationship with alcohol, at least partially due to conflicting values of religion and capitalism. Stutz says blue laws limiting alcohol sales can be bad for business.
“Last year, I think New Year’s Eve fell on a Sunday,” he says. “When you have to close down for that, there’s obviously going to be an impact.”
Still, Hildebrand says there are places throughout the country that are always going to favor these laws. They might have changed in the past few decades, but they’re never fully going away.
This news brief was originally published in the fall 2018 print edition.
