I’ve lived in Minnesota, North Carolina, and Washington. They’ve all had their own peculiar blue laws, laws that restricted doing business on Sunday. Many blue laws have gradually vanished over the years, although a recent Time magazine article pointed out there are still 15 states that forbid the sale of alcohol on Sunday. Many states have figured out that if you prohibit liquor on Sunday, thirsty people will drive to the nearest state.
I moved from Minnesota to North Carolina in the 1980s. One Sunday morning, I jumped in the car and drove several blocks to the local 24-hour convenience store for something (coffee? bread? eggs?) and discovered they were closed. Apparently there was a law that said all stores had to close for an hour on Sunday morning, even if the sign says "Open 24 hours." It was like the Steven Wright joke: "Your sign says you’re open 24 hours." He said, "Yes, but not in a row."
The next day at work, I asked someone about it and learned that all stores in NC had to close for an hour to allow their employees to go to church. That's a typical blue law.
More about blue laws below.
Blue Laws in the American Colonies
We’ve all heard about the Puritans and the Pilgrims and various other groups who left England in search of religious freedom. But once they arrived in the colonies they often set up their own oppressive regimes with Sabbath laws. From Wikipedia,here are some of the Sabbath-day laws from the 1655 statutes of the Colony of New Haven (in modern-day Connecticut):
No one shall run on the Sabbath day, or walk in his garden or elsewhere, except reverently to and from meeting.
No one shall travel, cook victuals, make beds, sweep house, cut hair, or shave, on the Sabbath day.
No woman shall kiss her child on the Sabbath or fasting day.
There were also rules outlawing Catholics, Quakers, Adamites (I had to look it up), and assorted other heretics. Celebrating Christmas and saints’ days was also forbidden. You want to see a "war on Christmas?" Look at the 17th century colonies.
I should point out in passing that Rhode Island was founded by people who were kicked out of Massachusetts for their religious opinions and they were more liberal and more accepting compared to some other colonies. Rhode Island was the first colony to declare independence from England and the last to ratify the Constitution, after insisting that the Bill of Rights be added. Thank you, Rhode Island, for the Bill of Rights. Thank you so very much.
There is a story that the Connecticut blue laws were printed on blue paper, but that’s probably not true. It’s more likely that they’re called ‘blue laws’ because ‘blue’ means "rigid, puritanical, or excessively moral." People who are bluenoses or blue stockings tend to be prim and proper – and judgmental.
I find it fascinating that the word ‘blue’ has another, almost exactly opposite meaning. It means "forbidden, immoral, or blasphemous." If a stand-up comic works blue, or tells blue jokes, it means he/she uses a lot of swear words or talks about topics that make audiences uneasy.
WCTU: Progressive Politics and Anti-Immigrant Racism
From about 1900 to about 1930, the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was a political force. When I began reading about blue laws, I thought they were intended solely to enforce the Bible’s injunction to keep the Sabbath holy – that they were enacted by Christians who wanted to control other people’s behavior. Various states had restrictive laws that prohibited certain things on Sunday. On at least one day of the week there would be no drinking, no gambling, no billiards, no dancing, no singing (except in church), no working your farm, and so on. Because that’s what the Bible says.
But I ran across some references to progressive policies that arose out of blue laws. For example, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1873, to a large extent can be blamed for our national experiment in Prohibition from 1920-1933. They were against alcohol, but they also promoted social reform. The WCTU campaigned against prostitution, against poverty, and in favor of sanitary and sewage laws. They also worked for women’s suffrage. Again, from Wikipedia:
At a time when suffragists still alienated most American women, who viewed them as radicals, the WCTU offered a more traditionally feminine and appropriate organization for women to join.
I think it’s no coincidence that alcohol was prohibited by the 18th amendment (enacted in 1919) and one year later, the 19th amendment gave women the right to vote (in 1920). Give part of the blame and/or the credit to the WCTU. Their membership peaked about 1930 and then they gradually faded.
The WCTU was not without flaws:
Although the WCTU had chapters throughout North America and had hundreds of thousands of members, it did not initially accept Catholic, Jewish, or African-American women, or women who had not been born in North America.
The puritanical prohibitionist bluenoses of the WCTU were White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. They participated enthusiastically in the anti-immigrant prejudice of the mid- to late-19th century, which was directed at that time against the Irish and the Germans. The Irish and Germans (and Norwegians, to some extent) tended to be poor (because they were immigrants), they lived in ethnic neighborhoods (because they were immigrants), they spoke with accents, and some of them drank alcohol. A lot of them were Catholics, too.
At that time, there was some horrific racism directed against Irish Catholics – there was the Know Nothing Party and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan around 1915 and eugenics laws and so on. Sometimes I wish I had a time machine and could transport the Irish-Catholic Pat Buchanan back in time to about the 1890s. Let him live in that time and then criticize Sonia Sotomayor. Yes, you're a white man, Pat, but you're Irish and you're Catholic. Your ancestors were despised the same way you despise Hispanics.
The 1909 Sabbath-Breaking Law in WA
In Washington State, the WA Legislature passed the "Sabbath Breaking" law in 1909 (link here: Blue Laws -- Washington State).
The 1909 law forbade most businesses from opening on Sunday. So it’s a typical blue law. But here’s something I hadn’t thought about:
Religious motivations played a major role in its adoption. However, people also viewed it as being "progressive" legislation that prohibited most employers from requiring their employees to work seven days a week, in an era before workers had the protection of state labor regulations and labor union collective bargaining agreements.
An interesting way to look at it. Blue laws might actually help out workers.
The 1909 law was repealed by voter initiative in 1966. Here are a few facts from the same article:
The initial impetus for that campaign was not altogether altruistic. In February 1966, the newly elected leaders of the Young Democrats of Washington State were looking for a campaign issue that would attract Democratic voters to the polls in that year’s congressional, state legislative, and county elections.
...snip...
Some labor organizations supported the broad ban the Blue Law placed on commercial activities on Sunday, in order to preserve it as a day off for their members. For example, meat was a product that supposedly could not be sold on Sunday. This gave the butchers’ union a successful argument against merchants requiring butchers to work on that day.
...snip...
State Young Democrats President Lem Howell... filed an initiative proposal with the Secretary of State on February 18, 1966, which became Initiative 229. Howell also sought political allies. His first success was convincing Camden Hall, a Seattle attorney and the past president of the University of Washington Young Republicans club, to join the effort as co-coordinator with Howell.
...snip...
Howell thought that the Seventh Day Adventist churches in Washington state might be convinced to assist the campaign. The Blue Law arguably discriminated against that faith because its day of worship and rest from labor was Saturday, not Sunday. It had long participated in a national publicity campaign about the issue. However, the proposal might be a tough sell to those churches, because their doctrine preached complete abstinence from liquor consumption.
What a great story about bipartisanship. The Young Democrats started it. Some unions were against it. But Howell got the Young Republicans and the Adventists to join in. And the initiative was passed. Stores could open on Sunday.
I moved to Seattle in 1988, but I love reading the historical stories about the city. Seattle was often a corrupt city. Alcohol was prohibited in the 1920s, but there were plenty of speakeasy clubs. Prostitution was outlawed, but the prostitutes formed a "seamstresses union" to fight for better pay. And for a while, during WWII, Seattle was off limits to the military because too many soldiers and sailors were getting venereal diseases. Some bars had slot machines. Gay bars were technically illegal, but they existed. If you paid off the cops, you could do business. And the IWW (Wobblies) were pretty powerful.
There was racism in Seattle, too. There’s a street downtown called "Occidental" – Orientals weren’t allowed to live on the wrong side of that dividing line. And there were "sunset neighborhoods," meaning "if you’re an African-American, you’d better not be in this neighborhood after sunset."
Some Blue Laws I’ve Experienced (Or Heard About)
• When I lived in Minnesota (in the 1970s), liquor stores had to close on Sunday. You could buy beer at a grocery store, but only 3.2% beer. Which sucked. Also, the bars had to close at midnight on Sunday instead of 1 A.M.
• When I lived in Greensboro, North Carolina (in the 1980s), there were only two types of establishments that could serve liquor by the drink: restaurants (who had to prove that they sold more food than liquor) and private clubs (who only allowed members in). I well remember the Rhinoceros Club, which had a rhinoceros head on the wall behind the bar. Private clubs didn’t have to serve food, which was cool, but they could also prevent non-members and non-guests from entering, which meant (theoretically) they could keep black people out. The Rhinoceros patrons (and owners) were pretty liberal, so there were black people there, but the law about private clubs had obvious racist roots.
• NC also had some taverns, which only served beer and wine. They didn’t have the food rule.
• Some counties in NC were "dry," which meant no liquor. Someone told me that Appalachian State University was in a dry county. The nearest wet county was 40 miles away, which meant the college kids drove 40 miles, got drunk, and then drove back to college. And there were lots of drunk-driving accidents along that highway.
• I’ve heard that back in the 1930s, in Seattle, WA, bars could have windows, but only if they were six feet above the sidewalk. This would prevent children from looking inside. Also, men could sit at the bar, but women couldn’t (because what kind of woman would sit at a bar – she’s probably a prostitute). A woman couldn’t enter a bar unescorted by a man (because of the prostitute thing, again). It’s OK for men to drink, but we have to protect our women and children.
• I remember a time when Utah didn’t allow bartenders to mix your drinks. If you wanted a scotch and soda, you got a tiny airplane bottle of scotch and a glass of soda and you’d have to mix it yourself.
• I have a friend who was a bartender in Idaho. He told me a crazy story about a period of time when Idaho let you buy beer if you were 18 and liquor if you were 21 (which meant the bouncer at the door checked your ID and stamped your hand with one symbol or the other). Plus, bars had to stop serving beer at 1 AM, but could serve liquor until 2 AM. And that meant that, at 1 AM, the bartender might tell some 60-year-old guy, "I can’t serve you any more beer, but I can give you liquor for the next hour." Which is fucking crazy. Almost like it was intended to get people drunk just before they drove home.
• A friend told me about his ski trip to Utah. The nearest bar to his skiing condo was in a trailer. The bartender said, "Last Call!" and everybody in the bar got up and walked out. My friend said, "Wow, that was really quick. Can I finish my beer?" The bartender said, "Take all the time you want. And you can have as many more beers as you want. But right now, you need to move your car from the front parking lot to the back parking lot, in case the county sheriff drives by. I’ll turn off the lights in front and you can drink as long as you want. We just need to look like we’re closed."
Are Blue Laws Unconstitutional?
You might think so, because of the Constitutional prohibition of the establishment of religion. But you’d be wrong. The last time the Supreme Court looked at this issue was 1961: McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 81 S.Ct. 1101, 6 L.Ed.2d 393 (1961).
The Court rejected these arguments and upheld the law. Chief Justice Earl Warren, writing for the majority, acknowledged that the law and other similar laws had originally been enacted for religious purposes. He concluded, however, that the Sunday closing laws had evolved into further secular ends and that this defeated an Establishment Clause claim.
And that’s the end of my historical and anecdotal look at blue laws. I hope you liked it. I’d love to hear your stories about blue laws in your state or city.