What are blue laws?

this one than you. Why do you say that? Because I said this is boring, they fully recorded a little bit that may have something to do with it, and then me saying, oh, no, I think it's pretty interesting. Oh I don't think it's really that boring. And it was my pick, um, Yeah, what made you choose that? Well, I mean we're talking about blue laws, and just very quickly, blue laws are our laws from ancient times that have carried over still in some places to modern day America

and other countries as well. I guess that restrict certain activities on certain days. But generally in the United States, we think of blue laws are things that you can't do on Sundays a lot of time. Their vices like you can't drink or buy alcohol until sometimes at all, or until certain times, or maybe restrict working or gambling or you know, just various things. But uh, we had our own blue law, one blue law at least on the books in Georgia until just a few years ago,

you could not buy alcohol on Sunday at all. Yeah. I think Georgia was the last state to repeal a full Sunday prohibition on buying alcohol full prohibition. But then I mean it passed by a ridiculous measure, something like but you still can't buy booze before I think noon on Sunday. And that's weird. And it seems like if you step back, if you were an alien, let's say, right, and you came down and you're like, that's a great way. So let's say you're work from work, right, Okay, that's

what you just reminded me of. And you show up with your super cool block color puffy vest and you say, I want to familiarize myself with laws. This would makes sense. This makes sense. What you can't buy alcohol before noon on Sunday, So that doesn't make any sense. That was my impression of mark Um. If he dug a little deeper, it would become obvious that it makes a ton of sense if you're coming at it from the vantage point of a Christian in the Western hemisphere who observes Sunday

as the day of um worship and rest. Right outside of that context, it doesn't make sense. And there in lies the rub. There's the big push and pull between people who are like America is founded essentially on the idea and promise the separation of church and state. We're supposed to keep those two separate, So we shouldn't have the state making laws that enthusiastically support one of the tenets of this one particular church Christianity, which is you should not be doing a whole lot of stuff on

Sunday and you should probably be going to church. And other people who say no, no, that's it's actually a really really good thing to do. This even if you don't believe in religion, even if you don't go to church,

blue laws actually still help us out right. There have been arguments, including as we will learn, all the way up to the Supreme Court, that say, well, it may have started religious, but there are many secular benefits two, um, sort of forcing families to all be off work on the same day at gunpoint, go play together, right, take

a walk. So I propose we talked about the history of blue laws first and then kind of get into some of the wackier ones and then talk about legality and so on, and so you could call what I'm doing now the table of contents? Do you agree to this table of contents? Uh? So? Are you saying you want to skip ahead to the where did blue laws come from? That is my proposal. Okay, I love you springing this stuff on me. I am flexible, though I know nimble, I know crazy. All I have to do

is shuffle some paper. Okay, you're eighteen. I mean it makes sense because, yeah, if you are an outside observer, even if you're an inside observer, you might not realize how ancient that the Blue laws are and that they actually, um, conceivably they don't necessarily predate Christianity, but they weren't necessarily Um,

they're pretty old. How about that? Well? Yeah, I mean, anyone who grew up going to church knows about the ten Commandments and knows that that fourth commandment says, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy or and keep it holy. And depending on what religion you are, that could be a different day. Judaism Saturday. If your Seventh

day Adventist, that's Saturday. But Christianity at a certain point between the second and fifth centuries were like, yeah, you know, let's distance ourselves from Judaism and let's move our day to Sunday. Uh that way we can have our own day. We can tell everybody they're observing the wrong day, and it's a win win. Yeah. There's also, um the knock on effect of taking over Sunday from the Pagans who um observed Sunday as the day to worship the Sun Sunday.

So it was basically total and complete encroachment and actually moving the day, the Sabbath day to Sunday. That that caused that. It's pretty pretty interesting. I hadn't known that before, and it's it's so, let's so now we have like the Christians saying, okay, everybody change the plans like that guy on the Fidelity commercial change plants. I haven't seen that. Oh man, it sounds like a Bond villain. It's crazy. Uh So, So the point was that the Christians said okay, everybody,

the Sabbath is now on Sunday. And then they followed that up with really enforcing that that originally Jewish um tenant, which was like basically, observe a day of rest and worship on the Sabbath and don't do anything else. Right, And um, we don't know exactly when the first laws were enacted, but it could have been. And this is the grabster that helped put this one together for us. So thanks to add for that. But uh, possibly in three sixty three, a d at the Council of uh

Ladocia does see you. I would say, Leo to see you, Leo to see you. That's my I thought that a might be silent. But weren't you raised Baptists. You don't know about the council of Leo to see you. I had never heard of it, truly, you are Joe King. I am Joey al right, Because that was a meeting of of leaders in the Christian religion who said we

need to get some laws on the books. I'm surprised I hadn't heard of it, but I hadn't or possibly the first laws were from ancient Rome, uh, and I saw various Roman emperors who could have been responsible for these. I saw Constantine in three twenty one. Yeah, I think I saw one of the other dudes. But I got that from the Valdosta Times. Take that or leave it,

that's right. So so you had a bunch of Christian rulers, essentially is the upshot of all this that kind of took over and started issuing these proclamations and new crees and stuff about observing the Sabbath. Right. Yeah, for like hundreds of years this happened in various ways, various loss thing. You can do this, you can't do that. Uh, it was I think the Protestants were a little less into it, but not real I mean, they were still into it.

I think it would be disingenuous to say the Protestants were just fine with it, well supposedly with doing whatever on Sunday, supposedly, right. I think it wasn't that they weren't They weren't cool with just not having a day, a Sabbath day of some sort. It was Martin Luther wasn't big in following the old time rules, and he was saying, it doesn't have to be Sunday, don't be ridiculous,

just but do a day a week. Um. But the irony of the whole thing is that Protestants would come to be like some of the biggest enforcers and writers of blue laws in America, especially as Sunday being the Sabbath day, like defending Sunday in particular, right, and so you know, these get enacted there. Obviously, when the colonies are being formed, they make their way over there. The Puritans were like, oh, great, this is perfect. We're all

about restricting people whenever Sunday. That's fine, we'll restrict people on Sunday. And by the time the colonies roll around, they were pretty well ensconced, such that there's even a story. I think you can really do much of anything on Sunday's in the colonial times. But there's a story from Sight nine where supposedly George Washington himself was was tracked down or at least stopped by a sheriff for going for traveling on a Sunday, even though he was traveling

to church. Yeah, because the premise was that um, saddling up your horse or connecting a team of horses to a carriage or whatever that constituted labor, and you weren't doing any kind of labor on Sunday. And and speaking of the colonies, chock I turned up something about James Town's Blue Laws. Um, they had their first blue law enacted in sixteen ten, like right out of the gate. One of the first things they said was, here's some blue laws. Everybody gather around. So basically you couldn't do

like you were saying, anything on a Sunday. And uh,

tendency at church was mandatory on Sunday. So the blue laws actually made a lot more sense in that context, right, Like, but I'm guessing there was that there's probably some sort of like social you know, people snitching on one another kind of thing, like you notice who's not here, right, right, But in that context, the blue law makes more sense because it's like, you were supposed to be in church and if you do anything other than church, here are

your punishments. Right, But the punishments were really severe, Like the first time you were caught doing anything but going to church on a Sunday, you would go a week without food. Like they you got your food from like the village. The village all gathered and shared food. It was super socialist, right, and you weren't you were disinvited from that party until the next Sabbath. You did not get food, and that usually was enough to straighten anybody out.

The second time you would lose your allowance for a week, and then you would also be whipped at the stake. The third time, they just told you. The third time they caught you doing something other than going to church on the Sabbath, even say after you'd been to church that day, you they would kill you. That was the punishment for So they were quite serious about that kind

of thing. Um. But over time that kind of fell away fell to the wayside, especially as America took up this project UM that was led by people like Thomas Jefferson called um disestablishmentarianism, right, yeah, and that's from the original word disestablishment. And then of course the very famous longer word that every elementary school student knows and can spell is the longest weird Is it still the longest word? I don't know, anti disestablishmentarianism, yes, which I always thought

was just like what does that even mean? Like is that a real word? But it's a real word, And now that we know what all this means, it makes perfect sense. Yeah, because disestablishmentarianism was that movement that basically said, look, we need to get the government out of the business of supporting churches because there's a lot more churches than there used to be when we when we were colonies, a lot of different Christian sects, and the government shouldn't

really throw its lawt into one against the other. That's a really English thing to do, because the I think even in the nineties, there was a movement or there's still a movement of foot in the UK to basically be like, okay, state, stop supporting the Anglican Church. It's

not you know, there should be a separation. The Americans picked up on that very early on, and so that led to this um like a bunch of laws and stuff that basically said, we're we're supporting religious freedom, not casting our lot with one particular sect or religion or another. So here in America you can practice whatever religion you want and the go you can you can expect the government not to promote some other rival religion, somebody else's

team over yours, because that's not fair. All right, you know what, that's a great cliffhanger. Uh, we'll take a little break here and we'll talk about what that resulted in, right, after this, all right, So here's where we are. Uh, the United States gets hit into disestablishment, which basically was, hey, we can't throw all of our eggs in one denominational basket, because there are a lot of different denominations here and we respect them all long as they're Christian. Basically that's

a parenthetical to that song title. And uh, you know what, what kind of happened was the I guess there's no other way to say it other than Evangelicals Protestant evangelical said, you know what, this is a great opportunity for us to really sort of grab the reins of power and to put our our morals and our values on everybody

else through law. Yeah, because you know they're every single average American wasn't like, yeah, government, get out of the business of supporting churches and get into just freedom of religion. There are plenty of people and this is the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, first half and nineteenth century, Um, there are plenty of people who are like, no, I I you guys have supported my church forever. Let's just

keep doing that. And so in that kind of sense of probably a certain sense of betrayal or loss of trust. A lot of religious leaders became political and and stepped up that that that amazing word anti disestablishmentarianism, which is fighting against that idea and basically saying, no America supports um Protestant churches. Basically America is waspy, is what they

were trying to say. Yeah, and it's funny, like if you think that this sort of thing started happening in the nineteen eighties, that was just a re establishment, like it started happening in the seventeen eighties. Really, yeah, that was the anti disestablishmentarianism revival, that's right. Uh they printed t shirts for uh, for Christian universities, and they they sold like hotcakes, I think. But uh so, all right,

here's what they're doing. They're trying to establish power. But there's a problem and that as America grew, the economy grew and businesses grew, and it didn't necessarily jibe with this shut everything down one day of the weak mentality. They were like, hey, there's there's money to be made on these days, and there are things to do on these days off that you're sort of making a stake. So there was sort of conflict even way back then

between I guess the secular and the religious. Yeah, and I mean I think that's ultimately the thing that that is the greatest tension at the heart of this, at least in America, this idea like, no, the whole the whole purpose of government, the whole reason for everyone living is to make a lot of money for certain select group of people. Serverybody, get back to work. What are you talking about taking a the day off on Sunday. That's a full day. You could be making us profit.

And so that that um became diametrically opposed to the idea of blue laws. And you had two really powerful institutions, the church or all of the churches that celebrated the sabboth On on Sunday, versus the captains of industry who were just now starting to really make on godly amounts of money during the Second Industrial Revolution in the United States, that's right, as well as Jewish people and Seventh day Adventists and just regular secular people who were just like, uh, no,

we shouldn't be doing stuff like this at all. Like what is separation of church and state all about? If we're still going to do stuff like this. I'm really glad you said that too. Because one thing that blue laws do is make really strange bedfellows. So in league with the churchy types, you had labor unions and you still do. Actually, labor unions still typically tend to support blue laws because religious or not, their workers are still

getting the day off on Sunday with their families. And on the other side, like you said, it's captains of industry, along with Seventh day Adventists and Jewish people, along with secular types. I mean, like those are those are not groups that you would normally put together on the kickball field or something, you know, that's right. And they had a couple of names. The Sabbatarians were the Evangelicals, the Protestant Evangelicals, Uh, and like you said, labor unions and

groups like that. And then the Anti Sabbatarians were the others. And you know, they kind of battled it out for a little while, and in the end, it turns out, and this should come as no surprise, Uh, there were more anti Sabbatarians who were like, no, we should not have these days often, we should separate church and state.

But the Sabbatarians were louder, and they were more um, they were more fired up basically, and they got people out to vote more, and they've got people to sign petitions more and to put more pressure on officials who decided these things. And so in the end what they did it was I mean, I don't know if it

was a win win or a lose lose. The blue laws kind of stayed pretty firmly entrenched on the books, but the anti Sabbatarians were able to carve out certain exceptions basically like hey, we should be able to do this in this and maybe stores can be open. But then the Sabbatarians are like, yeah, but no alcohol what soever. So it kind of played out like this. I don't know calling in a negotiation is the right term, but a long drawn out battle, let's call it a compromise. Sure.

So the the effect of all of this is that over time in the you know, it seemed like in the twentieth century, it really started to get to a road. Um, these little these exceptions got like bigger and bigger and carved out more and more of these blanket blue laws that remember originally started out is basically like you cannot do anything on Sunday, And then it was like except you can go and buy ice cream at the beach, or you can buy milk, but you're not allowed to

buy anything to put milk in. Um, just all sorts of weird stuff that made the whole thing seem really arbitrary. And there's this idea like um like, Okay, if you were if you're going to the beach, you can buy ice cream at the beach, but if you went into town, you would not be able to illegally buy ice cream. How does that make any sense? Well, it does in a certain way depending on how you look at the role of government. And in this case, it is arbitrary.

It is it does impact one group in town storekeepers in favor of another group beach side ice cream vendors. Right, But if you believe that the role of government is in part not just to support the economic activity of the citizens of the United States, but instead to support their well being as well, then it does make sense because what they're basically saying is, Okay, we want to encourage people to take that trip to the beach with their family on Sunday. And what makes a beach trip

that much more enjoyable ice cream. I don't think I've ever had ice cream on the beach I haven't either, but apparently it was like all the rage during the thirties and forties and fifties. I get it. I mean it's I bet it's nice. I love ice cream and I love beaches. We gotta try it sometime. We have to go to a beach and eat some ice cream very soon, chunk. Yeah, sure, so it makes sense in

that in that respect. But yes, if you're if you're one of those people who are like, no, these laws all need to make sense, they need to follow all the rules, then you probably have a pretty big problem with blue laws. Yes, should we talk about a few of these blue laws still in the books? I think so. So we mentioned Georgia, Like I said, up until just a few years ago, it was on the ballot to

be allowed to buy alcohol on the Sundays. But still if you go to Sunday brunch, and this was the same in believe it or not in New York until if you go to brunch on a Sunday you couldn't buy booze at a bar or restaurant until noon. I think in New York they changed it to ten. But I think in Georgia, I don't really do brunch much anymore. But I think it's still noon. As far as I know, it's still noon. But yeah, I haven't done brunch a

couple of years now. So if you if you get the jump on things and you're like, oh, we gotta beat those brunch crowds and get there at eleven, you know, there's a reason the brunch crowds come later. And it ain't church, no, but that is. But church is the reason why they set that time on Sundays to start around noon, because it's like, okay, everybody has a reasonable chance to go to the morning services and then they can get drunk. Everyone wins. Basically. It's funny. I remember

growing up in the Baptist Church. There were it was just sort of this implied agreement between the congregation, most of the congregation, and the preacher that like you wrap it up by noon because of lunch and football basically, And it was you know, there were some Sundays where like, you know, the spirit was was raging within the church and things would start to you know, he'd be feeling it and things would start to go a little long, and uh, you you would really sense the shifting of

bodies and the looking at watches and the unease among the congregation, usually like the dads that are like all right, like I'm glad everyone's feeling it and everything, but the Falcons kick off soon. We need to get out of here. Uh. And I remember being a kid, like being like twelve years old and sensing that and being on the side

of football. Yeah, that's funny. I have the opposite experience where I'm I'm like, I always dread somebody tying it up and going into overtime and preempting sixty minutes on Sunday. It happened this past Sunday as recently, is that I could tell at the beginning of the fourth quarter that the Cowboys and the Patriots were going to tie it up and go over time, and I have course right to wait like an extra hour for sixty minutes. Do you still watch sixty minutes? Yeah? I watched them more

than ever now. It's really great. I used to watch it as I believe it or not, as like a high school student. I was really into it, and maybe some in college, but I haven't really watched it in a long time. That's interesting then, because they had around that time, and like the early nineties, they had a very um a very famous piece on the Council of Leo to see you. Do they still use that stop watch? Yeah? Yeah, oh yeah, totally. Yeah. Alright, good crew they've got they've

got a good crew together. Yeah. Are there any remnants anyone's still around from the old days? Scott Pelly's on there. He's been on there for a while. I think, right, Oh see, that's it shows how long it's been for me. I'm like, is Morley Safer around? I don't know. I think Morley Safer might be dead. I think they're probably all gone. And Indersting Cooper's on there though, he's great too, FONSI. Everybody on there is fantastic. They should have you on.

There's no need for them to have me on. I'm just a fan. No, but that could be your next That could be like your retirement job hosting sixty minutes, doing pieces on sixty minutes. Yeah, you'd be great. I don't know if that's true, but I appreciate the voter. Cool would that be? I can hear that that ticking much behind you as you speak. I know it makes me tense, or it would make me tense if I actually worked for him, you know, I think I would

ruin sixty minutes. For me, I'd just rather kick back and watch it, you know, all right, yeah, work so much some of the other really interesting blue laws. And we should say too that there are there are blue laws on the books in a lot of places that aren't enforced. And then there are blue laws on the books that are still enforced. Uh in Texas, Illinois, and I think North Dakota. I think it's North Dakota. You cannot sell a car or by I guess you. I

guess you could sell one. I wonder if you're breaking the law if you sell one like on Craiglist or something. I think there's no car sales whatsoever allowed. And here's why. Here's why that one. I was like, okay, I do not get this one, and I have the search pretty far and wide for why. But apparently it was one of those things that's like a remnant from when you

couldn't do anything. And then they started making exceptions and started making exceptions saying, Okay, you can open this kind of store, you can sell this kind of item, and cars just never got accepted because the car dealerships didn't want that any longer, Like it made sense, Like they wanted a day off. It's really hard work. They wanted to give time off to their employees. They also didn't want to have to pay to keep the lights on

and all that stuff an extra day. But if even one dealership was allowed to stay open, then all of them would go to So if there was a state law that said no car dealerships can be open, then that gave the people in the car dealership industry that day off that they otherwise definitely would not have had. So it makes sense in that case, you know what I'm saying, Like it makes would start selling exactly, and then everyone's like, you see what McIntyre is doing, we

gotta open up now. And there's even there's In Texas in particular, they allowed for UM Jewish or Seventh Day Adventist car dealership owners by saying, okay, you can you can, UM, you don't have to close on Sunday, but if you don't close on Sunday, you have to close on Saturday. So one day out of the weekend your dealership has to be closed, which helped keep from promoting unfair competition. Right, well,

it's football is big in Texas. I wonder if it comes down to you into college, you into pro I saw somewhere that the NFL played on Sunday because early on they couldn't compete with college games held on Saturday. But I'm not sure if that's true or not. That makes sense, and I think now, uh, they are almost expressly prohibited from having Saturday games in the NFL, yes, because of an agreement with the n c double A.

But I think there's the exception. I think sometimes at one point in the playoffs they have like one weekend, whether it's a Saturday game in like December or something like that. They're all think that it's like a law. Isn't that crazy, That's like a federal law. There's like has something to do with broadcasting or something like that. You know that the NFL plays in London, uh occasionally now to like um, and my buddy Justin from London

was wondering. He was like, why are they playing these games at nine in the morning US time, because like they could have them at a more appropriate time in England. And I was like, dude, that means it's because of advertising. That means from nine am they can lock up the entire TV day. Yeah, they did, this past weekend, and they preempted CBS Sunday morning too. That's right, they can lock it up from nine am till four thirty or whatever. It was a hell day. Basically, this past Sunday was

hellish for me. It was a hell sabbath. I thought you like football. No, no, no, I don't really watch football anymore. And I definitely have never been into pro I used to be into college. Yeah, all right, but that's final. I don't poop poo it or anything like that. I'm just not No. I got you. Uh, Maine, in Virginia, you're not allowed to hunt on Sundays. Um, Maine is sort of uh. We love our we manor friends. But they up until nineteen you couldn't shop in a department

store on Sunday. That one makes sense because department stores sold so many different items that they said it's just easier for you to stay closed on Sundays. Yeah. And it's interesting because you know, there's the case of Bergen County, New Jersey, which, um, that's here's the deal. That's in

Bergen County. It's a hold over from the old days, but it has more to do with um helping the mom and pop stores because in the I guess it was in the nineteen fifties, Bergen County was one of the first big suburbs outside of New York and it was I think one of the first big um areas of like kind of shopping mall retail experience kind of thing in the United States. And they I mean, I was trying to think of a different way to say that,

and the idea was and and still is. And you know, when I said it a minute ago, we talked about mom and pop stores on Sundays, like having to pay employees. That's really what it came down to was mom and pop stores were willing to close on Sunday so they could rest and chill out with their family or maybe go to church, and they wouldn't have to pay their employees and they wouldn't have to pay as much electricity and just the cost of operating. But the big box

stores moved in and they didn't care. They could afford to keep the lights on, they could afford to pay their employees, and they didn't want to lose that revenue. So all of a sudden, the mom and pop stores were getting crushed on Sundays by these larger chain stores and these shopping malls and so Bergen County still is the one holdout in the United States in Bergen County, New Jersey, where you you can't shop basically on a Sunday, right, And it's and it's come up time and time again,

and they keep saying no. Yeah. I think as recently as two thousand thirteen they couldn't even get enough signatures to get it onto the ballot, let alone vote. I think they just like it. They do, and I saw it's not just because they know it helps mom and pop stores or it gives people a day off, but that UM apparently traffic around there is a living nightmare every other day of the week. So it's at least one day we're traffic this one day. Yeah. The North

Dakota ban is really interesting. I think they had one of the last statewide bands on shopping known as Offenses against Religion and conscious Conscience repealed in UM. But they the exceptions are what's always strange. Their exceptions where ice cream, newspapers, cigars, medicine of course, restaurants, hotels, and owner operated stores with three employees are fewer. Yeah, that is strange for sure,

but I think it's not necessarily um peculiar. Like I think that's how most blue laws ended up uh in states where they have prohibitions on shopping, because over time a lot abousts would show up and one of their friends would end up as governor or legislature and they would get their particular industry carved out as an exception. No, not that there are exceptions. I just think what's carved out is always really interesting to me. I found this

article from when they repealed Texas as blue laws. They were in force from ninety five, and this article was just talking about how weird they were by and they said that you could go into a store and you could buy a blank video tape, but you couldn't buy one a video tape with something already on it, which is this just does a little so weird and interesting,

and they made sense in some way. But then I'm sure somebody was like, you know that that exception was made before there wasn't even such a thing as videotapes, And then even now it's even funnier because there's not videotapes any longer. They're already come and gone, right, But like you're saying, it's all about who cares, like what lobby cares the most. Like the cigars thing in North Dakota, just obviously somebody with a steak in a cigar company

grease the right palms. Yeah. Same in Maryland, Um, as we'll see, had a lot of laws, a lot of restrictions on it, but they had all tobacco products were exempted because it was a huge tobacco state in like the mid century, during the mid century, last century. All right, I think we should take another our final break here and we'll talk about, you know, whether these things are legal and what the Supreme Court and the Feds have

to say about all this coming up. Okay, Chuck, So we're talking about legality because, like we said, anybody who takes even a cursory look at these laws can can make a pretty great argument that these should not be on the books. That number one, the government shouldn't be regulating anything that has anything to do with religion. Certainly shouldn't be telling people who don't practice religion to to

observe this religious day. It's a big one. But then also they just don't really make a lot of sense. And that's another kind of litmus test for laws. They're supposed to be sensible and apply to basically everyone equally. Sure, because this is America. Yeah, so you would think then that the Supreme Court would have taken one look at these things and been like, get these out of here,

get them out of my face. And that is not the case, because not only did the Supreme Court get its shot at um ruling on blue laws as early as nineteen sixty one, it is pretty much consistently upheld the legality and the constitutionality of blue laws ever since then. Yeah. And you know, we should note that these none of these are federal laws. They are all at the most state laws, but many times even like local ordinances and

city and kind of county laws. But I think it was McGowan versus Maryland v. Maryland in nine which went to the Supreme Court and and this, uh, you know, it's interesting that Maryland is the one that kind of keeps getting talked about because of their um, I guess, their tobacco laws and then their beach their beach scene.

They want to sell that ice cream on the beach definitely, and floaties and stuff like that, right, uh, And Supreme I think the they went eight one in Maryland's favor, saying that blue laws could stand, and Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote this opinion that basically says, yeah, you know, it may have started out as religious, but like we said earlier, it serves the secular society and there's a benefit to everybody basically to have a regulated day of rest.

And William Douglas this, I think it was the lone dissenter and basically in his opinion was like, that's a load of horse manure. We all know what these are there for, and like, I'm not buying it. No. And Earl Warren, I don't know if his interpretation would be constructionalist or what, but in his opinion he basically said, the Constitution says that the government won't infringe on somebody's

religious rights. And I don't see how anybody who is saying that they're being forced to take the day off has their religious rights being infringed upon. And Douglas is like, come on, man, that's not what anybody's saying. They're saying that the government is basically supporting this Christian worldview of Sunday being the sabbath by by allowing these laws that enforce a day off on the Sabbath and that that is just how that like, that's the government is supporting

a religion and that's not okay. Um, But the the Supreme Court is just like consistently upheld Lawren's view that no, these are actually okay because even if you're not a religious person, you're benefiting benefiting from them anyway. Yeah, it seems like William Douglas also wanted to make a point that, like he was like, we're so firmly ensconced in this uh Christian nation that like we don't even realize, like Sunday shouldn't be different than any other day, and we don't.

We don't we have all these things in our society that treats Sunday different because it was you know, it was. It's such a Christian nation and like even though their separation of church and state, like we don't even realize that we're biased either for or against Sunday for those reasons. Yeah. A really good thought experiment I stumbled on was imagining the government decreeing Tuesday is the day of rest for everybody. Yeah, exactly, and how bizarre that would seem to almost every single

person in America. Yeah, our podcast would be over because that's when, Yeah, but that would be that like that that really kind of um supports Douglas's point, like no, like you guys are really coming from this, like it's so entrenched into your your worldview that you can't imagine Sunday is not a day of rest, like that's the day of rest. But that is a Christian belief. It's an ancient one, but that is at its root of

Christian belief. And that that if you are a separation of church and state type like that will drive you up the wall. That there are such thing as blue laws and they have been deemed constitutional. But see, I'm that way too, Like that stuff drives me crazy. But as a as a secularist, Now, if I had a dollar for every time I complained about like, oh, come on,

it's a Sunday. We all we all use Sunday as either as an excuse to not do something or an excuse to do something, like it's just become the national day. I feel like, well, you're a warrant fan and you don't even know it. I read this really interesting article in box that was basically endorsing Warren's opinion is by this economist named Lyman Stone. It's called why we Need Blue Laws. I think the title is a little longer,

but if you search, that will turn this up. And um, Lyman Stone was basically saying, like what what Chief Justice Earl Warren is saying is actually a really progressive view of the role of government. And it was what I was saying earlier that the that that there's this interpretation that government can exist as help support the well being of its citizens. And one way to do that is

to say, hey, you know, yes, Sundays a Christian day. Yeah, the churches are really making out like bandits with these blue laws. Bully for them. You over here, come, come talk to me over here. You're still getting a lot out of this because you get the day off and your whole family gets the day off all at the same time. And trust me, you do not want to work seven days a week. This is a really great way for us, in a roundabout way, to make sure

you have the day off. And that is something that that is going to help you and we as the government interested in you not going crazy and shooting up your workplace because you work too much. Right Ed points out something too that I agree with a bit of

a paradox though with the Blue laws. If you're giving people this day off together as a family, but you're also closing businesses that you know, if that's your day to do stuff or to get stuff done, even then that's a paradox because all right, I've got Sunday off with my family, but I can't go to the mall if that's what you want to do if I live in Bergen County. Right, So lyman Stone has an answer for that as well. What does the stoner have to say?

Stoner says as follows. Basically, ts like, yeah, the post office is closed on Sunday, go go take some time and mail it another day, which, on the one hand, it's like there's a lot of people who have to take the bus and have to actually take time off of work and could conceivably get fired from their job for needing to go mail a package. Um. I think lyman Stone would say, well, you should keep the post

offices open on Saturday. But the bigger risk, to liman Stone is that if you keep some stuff open, like restaurants or something like that, you actually create a second class of workers who exist to serve the upper class of workers who get Sunday off. And after all, isn't that like pretty undemocratic and terrible to to kind of separate people like that? Why not just close everything and and give everybody everybody the same day off. That's the stone.

I feel that way sometimes when I'm doing something on a Sunday and someone has to work, and I remember having to work on Sunday and I hated it. It comes home for me most done like say like Thanksgiving or something where people have to work for Black Friday or stuff like that like that, that to me, it's it's the same thing. But but that's when it really

sticks out to me. Well, this is something, my friend, that you would think that there are studies about commerce and economics, and surely they have proven one way or the other which is the best way forward, right right the end, Well, they have done some studies, and it kind of depends on what study you're looking at as as far as quantifying these effects and how they're measured. But when it comes to alcohol, they have shown their studies have shown that, um, there are not more car

accidents happening because people can drink on Sundays. And that's you know, some people argue like, hey, people aren't drinking. They may not be drinking and driving and then getting in car crashes, but that hasn't really turned out that way. Yeah, now that's pretty surprising too, um, because a lot of

these studies have turned up kind of counterintuitive things. Um. There was a study conducted in Georgia that, um looked like Georgia's a great test case because there's so many counties that have blue laws and other counties that don't have blue laws, so you can like just compare these really similar populations with one another. And they found that, Um, if you have a county that has a blue law and one that doesn't, there's virtually no difference in alcohol

consumption between the two. But there are like little tiny changes, like, um, the employees in the county without a blue law might make slightly more money because they can work on Sundays. Um, Or in counties that do have blue laws, liquor stores make a little bit less than their counterparts and counties without blue laws. Stuff you kind of expect. But the difference in alcohol consumption, I thought that was a little interesting.

I guess people just load up more on Saturday night than they would if they lived in the county that wasn't dry on Sundays. Maybe maybe they're hungover on Sunday. Maybe they just take it a little easier on Sundays after work on Monday. Another counterintuitive effect as far as shopping goes in places like Bergen County, UM is they have found that people it doesn't decrease the overall retail experience in terms of dollars. I love that term now,

the retail experience. Uh, you know, because some people argue like, oh, if we close on Sundays, then you know, we're just gonna lose out on business. But I think they have found that when these laws are in place and people know that they're closed on Sundays, they just do their shopping Monday through Saturday, and they still buy the same amount of stuff. Um. I found one study from two thousand and eight from M I. T that was almost like cartoonish in its results. Are you ready for this?

They studied fifty years of repeal blue laws, and they found that blue laws. Repealing blue laws decreases church attendance and church donations significantly, although there's no other change in charitable activity. It's just churches who are basically now competing against um other pastimes and activities, and the churches lose big time unless they have state enforced support for people to go to them in the form of blue laws. And they also saw that repealing blue laws led to

an increase in drinking and drug use. And the increased drinking and drug use was most pronounced in those people who used to attend church but then stopped attending church after the blue laws were repealed. So basically everything that if you were into blue laws were afraid of this two thousand eight m I T study said like, yeah, absolutely, it's it's as bad as you think, maybe even worse.

Isn't that interesting? That's super interesting. Yeah. I guess the last thing we need to cover is where the why they're called blue laws. Uh, there are a lot of theories. It says no one knows for sure, and I think that's probably true. But the one I've seen most often, although it is the Internet, so that really means nothing, is that the Puritans. I saw that they wrote their laws in general on blue paper. Then I also saw where they wrote their Sunday laws specifically on blue paper.

That one makes sense more than the other. Yes, the thing is is no historian ever in the world has ever turned up example of one of these things, right,

so that one might be apocryphal. There's another one that, um it makes a really good point that there's some slang terms that were in existence around the time that these laws started being called blue laws about the end of the eighteenth century, and the two slang terms were blue nose and blue stocking, and both of them basically referred to a prudish, rigid person who was so miserly

that they just saved money anyway they could. The one had a blue nose because they wouldn't, you know, cough up money for like heating in the winter time, so their nose term blue, and the other was that they had blue stockings because they use blue yarn to med their socks rather than getting new ones. But either way, it kind of like paints a pretty pretty good picture.

Something tells me, if you like, saw somebody's tip they left and you're like, nice tip, blue nose, right, that they would probably think that's super like offensive or something. Probably probably, and I'm not convinced there's not some really bad offense in there somewhere that we're just not seeing. It's possible isn't there some something to be taken offense too? And everything? Probably Blue knows ouch you got anything else? I do not, sir, Well, if you want to know

more about Blue laws, start studying them. They are hilarious and entertaining. And since I said hilarious and entertaining, it's time, of course for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this follow up to I don't know about that. Yeah, I think it was during um the research bias episode. I talked about a certain breed. I'm sure it happens everywhere,

but there's a certain breed of Southerner. When they're being debated and presented with literal facts, they just go on, I don't know about that, and that's sort of the end of things. And so this is from Rebecca. I was glad to see this email. Chuck talked about how much he hated it when people say I don't know about that when presented with evidence that contradicts their worldview.

There's a term for that. It's called a thought terminating cliche, almost aid circle, which is a dismissive tactic as a speaker, and they will use it to end a debate when they encounter cognitive dissonance, or when someone presents them with facts that run counter to their established beliefs. Other examples are, boy, I hate all these let's agree to disagree. Yeah, that's sometimes it's like that's the only way to end a conversation. No, I think, just say it a different way. There's something

about that that I just don't like. Oh so it's the cliche part you don't like more than the thought terminating part. It's both, but definitely if it was said in another way, I'd probably be more apt to accept it. How About let's continue to not agree on this forever, but both be okay, what's that? Yeah, yeah, there you can. Uh, that's just your opinion is another one, and it's all good. That's the worst, especially when that's followed by bro and

said by somebody who has a sole path. I unfortunately don't know what what tactics there are to respond to such cliches and reopen discussion. But maybe an episode on intentional fallacies would be a great way to educate listeners on the rhetorical tactics the journalist, politicians, and debaters used to sway the course of an argument. Anyway, it's all good, and that is a great email. That's from Rebecca in Chicago. Thanks Rebecca, that was indeed one of the tops as

far as emails we've received goes. Thank you for it. Uh and if you want to see if you can pull one up on Rebecca, let's hear it, you can send us an email to stuff podcast did iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.