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Blue laws, or Sunday closing laws, are state and local laws that compel nonessential businesses to close on Sundays. Called blue laws because of the color of paper on which they were initially printed, these decrees date back to America's Colonial era. The laws originated as governments' express efforts to sanctify the Sabbath through legislation. State and local courts routinely upheld these laws throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The First Amendment's Establishment Clause was first incorporated, or applied to states and localities, in Everson v. Board of Education (1947). After Everson, the Supreme Court began to delineate the relationship between state laws and the Establishment Clause, particularly in the realm of prayer in public schools. The school prayer decisions (Engel v. Vutale [1962]; Abington Township School District v. Schempp and Murray v. Curlett [1963]) from this era have garnered much publicity, but during this time the Court also ruled on the constitutionality of blue laws. Though the Court generally ruled that prayer in school was an unconstitutional establishment of religion at the state level, blue laws survived intact.

A pair of 1961 Supreme Court cases directly addressed the constitutionality of blue laws. In McGowan V. Maryland (1961), Chief Justice Warren, writing for the majority, addressed the claim that blue laws were instituted by the legislature to encourage attendance of Christian worship services, thereby making them an unacceptable establishment of religion. Warren noted that "despite the strongly religious origin of these laws . . . nonreligious arguments for Sunday closing began to be heard more distinctly and the statutes began to lose some of their totally religious flavor." In fact, "proponents of Sunday closing legislation are no longer exclusively representatives of religious interests. Recent New Jersey Sunday legislation was supported by labor groups and trade associations." The Court's ruling in McGowan recognizes a secular as well as religious purpose behind Sunday closing laws. The day of worship for some could be a well-deserved day of rest for others, and the fact that this day of rest coincides with the Sabbath does not necessarily constitute an establishment of religion by the government. . .

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