Retire the Blue Laws

If package store owners in northern Massachusetts have their way, one of the last of the state's blue laws will soon be retired. A group of store owners is challenging the prohibition against Sunday liquor sales, claiming the law is arbitrary and violates their state and federal constitutional rights to due process. Currently, store owners within 10 miles of the New Hampshire border are granted exemptions, and during the holiday season some counties--Middlesex County included--allow Sunday openings.

Unlike in Massachusetts, it is legal to sell liquor in New Hampshire on Sundays, and so the border exemption was made to keep liquor stores from losing the business. However, the law allows towns with so much as a sliver of land within 10 miles of New Hampshire to be covered by the exemption. Store owners in Ipswich, Mass. are allowed to sell on Sundays, while owners in its more northerly neighbor Essex are not, because a sliver of Ipswich stretches up within the ten mile zone. In response to the liquor store owners' complaints, the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission (ABCC) has promised to review this mishmash of laws.

Even if the law were fairly applied, it merely has the effect of shifting the border 10 miles south. Instead of correcting the existing exemption system, the state should scrap the Sunday liquor law entirely.

Blue laws are a vestige of Massachusetts' Puritan heritage, intended to protect the Christian Sabbath as a day of rest. In today's secular and diverse society, they are increasingly irrelevant. Clinging to these laws not only fails to recognize the changing religious practices of the state and the country, but also fails to recognize the proper limitations of the laws themselves.

The state government has no business legislating when, how, or if we observe the Sabbath. By putting the religious mores of one faith into law, Massachusetts is violating the spirit of the principle of separation of church and state. While laws requiring once-a-week shop closings in general might serve the nominally secular purpose of providing a day of rest (an aim sanctioned by the Supreme Court), the alcohol law imparts a specific religious judgement about drinking on Sundays which the state is in no position to make. Those who wish to observe the Sabbath by not drinking alcohol are free to do so but don't need the state's sanction and shouldn't be allowed to deprive others of the right to drink.

If the legislature takes any action at all, it will probably be to clarify the existing statues which will no doubt ease the unfair situation liquor store owners face. But ultimately, the Sunday liquor law is a ridiculously anachronistic and offensive relic. It should be repealed.