State or local laws that close all but essential businesses on Sunday to promote rest and the common welfare of the nation.
The first Sunday closing laws, or blue laws, went into effect in colonial America and were expressly designed to enable people to celebrate the Christian Sabbath. After the Civil War, businesses began to challenge the laws by, for example, publishing a newspaper on Sunday. In the late nineteenth century, labor unions and Sabbatarians joined forces to preserve Sunday as a common day of rest.
The Supreme Court has consistently upheld the Sunday laws. In Petit v. Maryland
Fifth Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment
General welfare clause
Religion, establishment of
Religion, freedom of