
America’s Last Ban on Sunday Shopping - danso
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/americas-last-ban-sunday-shopping
======
malchow
The fact that different municipalities, cities, and states have different laws
are not, as NYer suggests, evidence that 'modernity' has not come to these
places.

Part of the glory and endurance of the United States is its dual republic[1].
It oxygenates conflicts and allows for experimentation. The modern left
dislikes it and prefers federal power, but if I had to take a bet on whether
the United States will exist in 500 years, it'd be premised in large part on
the exquisitely balanced dual sovereignty of state and federal governments.

[1]
[http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fed_45.html](http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fed_45.html)

~~~
blahedo
> _The modern left dislikes it and prefers federal power...._

I'd say rather that both left and right have a complicated relationship with
the federal system; I know plenty of lefties that are gratified, in the face
of national pushback against their preferred initiatives, that they can at
least make progress at the state level. And we have all seen evidence of even
the most states-rights-rah-rah righties trying to make use of federal
prohibitions and requirements when they thought that the national Zeitgeist
was flowing in their direction.

I'm not calling _anyone_ a hypocrite over this, by the way, and I think most
anyone with a view on this would cop to a somewhat nuanced view if prodded.

~~~
wooter
Not that I disagree, but which are the "most states-rights-rah-rah righties
trying to make use of federal prohibitions and requirements when they thought
that the national Zeitgeist was flowing in their direction"?

~~~
blahedo
One example from a few years back was DOMA, which said that the federal
government couldn't recognise same-sex marriages even if a state performed
them (as they started to do a few years later).

Another is No Child Left Behind, a Republican-sponsored measure (though like
DOMA it did receive bipartisan support) that forced a lot of specific
educational policy on various states that weren't very happy about it, but
acceded because the alternative was federal defunding.

Another is various efforts involving abortion and, lately, contraception; I
hesitate to get too deep on specifics lest I derail the thread, but right-wing
efforts there have not been confined to the state level. (Nor have left-wing
efforts, obviously.)

------
sheetjs
One point not mentioned in the article: Sales Tax.

Clothing is fully tax exempt in New Jersey. Bergen County is in very close
proximity to NYC and plenty of people make the drive over to NJ (or take one
of the buses from Port Authority Bus Terminal to Garden State Plaza) to save
on sales tax, and the malls in Bergen County have pretty much every major
brand that has a presence on Madison Avenue, so it's easy to save a pretty
penny by going to NJ and purchase clothes. One of the big fears is that
allowing Sunday shopping would increase traffic due to these shoppers.

~~~
bko
I grew up in the area. I don't think many New Yorkers come to Bergen County
for the shopping. It would probably take about 2 hours to get to Garden State
Plaza and require the subway and a bus. A much more convenient choice would be
the Woodbury Commons as there are express buses from the city that take you to
these large outlet malls. I imagine they service a lot of New Yorkers as well
as tourists.

I just don't think that people realize the true economic consequences of
forbidding commerce on one day a week. No one wants to work on Sunday, or most
other days for that matter. Nor do people want the traffic. What these people
don't think about is the fact that not having the luxury to shop when you want
hurts those that have a busy schedule or those that would like to to work on
that day.

It's crazy to think the bar for outlawing something is so low.

~~~
Spooky23
NYC != Manhattan. We grew up in Queens and did a lot of shopping in the route
17 area. Long ago, you used to be able to avoid some sales tax on cars as
well.

Hell, even today I know folks who'll hit the Apple Store in a low/no tax state
like NH or Delaware on the way back from vacation.

Personally, I liked the Sunday bans and reduced hours. So much of the retail
workforce is part time, and that respite on Sunday (when malls close at 6) is
appreciated by most.

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infinotize
I can see why some people might enjoy a collective day of rest, but that's no
justifiable reason to make it illegal for people who don't care about that to
buy and sell goods. Not everyone has the same 9-5 M-F week schedule. It's not
like you can't just close up on Sunday if you want, anyway.

~~~
tormeh
It's a game theory thing. It's more efficient if we all shop during a limited
time and the retail workers then go home. However, if one shop is open when
the other is not then people stop restricting their purchasing times and go to
the open shop, forcing the competitor to also be open all the time. End result
is lots of retail workers wasting time while waiting for customers around the
clock.

~~~
alistairSH
I wonder how that plays out in the internet (Amazon) age? I do most of my
retail shopping on the weekends. Cut out 50% of my available shopping time,
and it's just another incentive to buy online.

------
logn
The 1st Amendment applies to states via the 14th Amendment. I don't get why
states and counties are allowed to have religious laws. Of course, it's a long
standing double standard that Christian laws are allowed. I'd hope if someone
took this to the Supreme Court that these laws would be struck down.

That said, I fully support privately recognized religious days or "personal
sabbaths".

~~~
gizmo686
This has been tested in the Supreme Court, McGowan v. Maryland:

"The 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, Note, 73 Harv. L. Rev.
730-731; modern English Sunday legislation was promoted by the National
Federation of Grocers and supported by the National Chamber of Trade, the
Drapers' Chamber of Trade, and the National Union of Shop Assistants. 308
Parliamentary Debates, Commons 2158-2159."

"However, it is equally true that the "Establishment" Clause does not ban
federal or state regulation of conduct whose reason or effect merely happens
to coincide or harmonize with the tenets of some or all religions. In many
instances, the Congress or state legislatures conclude that the general
welfare of society, wholly apart from any religious considerations, demands
such regulation. Thus, for temporal purposes, murder is illegal. And the fact
that this agrees with the dictates of the Judaeo-Christian religions while it
may disagree with others does not invalidate the regulation."

[https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=172176815440485...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=17217681544048586142&q=McGowan+v.+Maryland&hl=en&as_sdt=20000006&as_vis=1)

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petercooper
I live in England and when I was a kid in the 80s basically _nowhere_ was open
on a Sunday. In the 90s, it changed so the only restriction is that any store
over 3000 sq. ft can only trade for 6 consecutive hours.

Even as a non-believer I like these rules and even miss the older ones. Having
Sunday be a generally accepted "day of rest" (even if you don't observe it
yourself) appeals to me as a way of having a shared cultural "rhythm" to life.
Germany's "quiet time" laws seem to play a similar role there. I appreciate
not everyone likes such cultural harmonization (or restrictions, based on your
POV), however, and things are likely to liberalize further nonetheless.

~~~
chrismcb
Then take a day of rest. Not everyone is going to share the same "rhythm" no
matter what. Fit example other stores are still open, like that Starbucks. And
some people enjoy shopping, some find it restful. Who should argue what is
recreational?

~~~
petercooper
My head agrees with you. My heart, though, clings a little to the beauty of
shared cultural behaviour. Long term, everyone's behaviour will be so
independent that each day will look the same but for now, Sunday _feels_
different to any other day in most of England. (This is not much the case in
central London, however, as it essentially has no majority culture being a
world city.)

My feelings about Sunday are like those of many Americans over Christmas or
Thanksgiving. You don't interrupt people and you can't judge people for being
unavailable. Most Americans have a cultural appreciation of how those days
affect life even if they don't personally celebrate.

I should note I'm not really disagreeing with you - I think people should be
able to do what they want - but I wanted to reflect on the idea there are
cultural pros and cons in all directions and that restrictions can have a
point (and beneficial side effects) even if that point must expire someday.

------
Falkon1313
As a kid, I could never understand why so many stores were only open during
the times when most of their potential customers were either at work or
school. Sure, you could skip school or take an unpaid day off work to spend
money, but that cost you double. So most of those stores are gone now,
replaced by 24-hour wal-marts and internet shopping.

When I grew up, I worked night shift for many years, which at least enabled me
to get to the bank, doctor, or specialty stores occasionally by skipping
sleep. It was still irritating that they weren't open on my nights off, but at
least then the bars were. On the other hand, I couldn't very well go to the
bar to hang out after work because there's still a bit of a stigma against
hanging out at a bar drinking at 8 am.

I'm all for taking days off and having time slots reserved for family, etc.,
but inconveniencing everyone else and forcing other people to conform to
whatever hours/days you happen to want is just obnoxious. In a society where
we can't all afford to hire servants to do our errands for us, people want
things that they can't buy because the businesses aren't open, and there are
tons of unemployed people who could be working if those businesses were open,
it just doesn't make sense to arbitrarily force them to close against the will
of the owners, potential customers, and potential employees. I'm amazed that
these laws have lasted as long as they have.

------
david-given
I live in Switzerland.

In Switzerland, _nothing_ is open on Sunday, by law, except the occasional
café or restaurant[footnote]. And it's a total pain.

Combined with the quiet time laws, which mean that, say, I'm unable to use the
vacuum cleaner on a Sunday, it means that I can't even do much housework, and
am pretty much forced to relax. So is everybody else.

The end result is that if you go out on a Sunday, you don't meet anyone who's
working. Parks are full of people not doing much. The mountainside paths have
people walking. The roads don't have much traffic. The entire country is quiet
and peaceful.

So, while not being able to shop on Sundays is still a pain... I can see the
benefits. Having a day where the entire country isn't working definitely adds
to the texture and flavour of the society.

[footnote] Shops in railway stations are exempt from this, the result being
that major railway stations tend to have multilevel shopping malls built under
them, but even in the land of ubiquitous public transport they're still
incredibly inconvenient to get to.

------
lnanek2
My grandma's house was in Bergen county. Originally I was against the law,
considering it just a hold back of more religious times, but pretty much no
one supports keeping the law due to religion. Everyone just says it is nice to
have a day without massive amounts of traffic clogging the region.

I did indeed notice it was much easier to go out and do your food shopping or
go running at the park or track or whatever on Sunday. So it does seem to
accomplish what it is kept for.

So I don't support keeping the law banning some shopping on Sunday, but I
admit I see why it is there and consider the proponents to have a valid
reason. Logically, other laws like having no sales tax are also there for a
reason, so it is valid to encourage and discourage shopping legally like this.

------
cletus
This backwards deciding-what's-best-for-everyone-else type thinking drives me
insane.

I'm from Perth, Western Australia, a city of ~1.6 million people, which:

1\. only allowed retail shops to open on Sunday in _2012_; and

2\. only allowed retail shops to open past 6pm on weeknights in _2010_;

Over the years there have been numerous debates and even referenda about this.
The same arguments kept coming out:

\- what about "family" time?

\- what about the poor small businss?

I've always been on the side of the fence where consumers have some pretty
broad rights here. Up until 5 years ago, if you worked office hours the only
time you could get to a supermarket was Thursday night (late night shopping
until 9pm) or on a Saturday. That's pretty darn inconvenient.

I had an educated, single (at the time) flatmate once tell me "it's not that
hard for me to go to the shops in the morning and go to work a bit later" to
which my response was "well, that's nice for you. Not everyone has that
luxury".

The article here mentions the defeat of such laws in the state of New York due
to numerous exceptions. This had happened in Perth as well:

\- "independent" shops were allowed greater trading hours, including on
Sundays. This meant that IGA, a chain of affiliated "independent" supermarkets
were typically open 7 days while the big chains (Coles, Woolworths) were not.

\- Bunnings (equivalent to Home Depot) was allowed to open whenever they
wanted. It was probably too unpopular to do otherwise;

\- to artificially bolster failing street retail, two zones were established
that were allowed to trade on Sundays (in the Perth city center and
Fremantle). Additionally they had late night trading on Fridays instead of
Thursdays.

\- alcohol as a general rule is sold in a much more limited range of stores in
Australia. Corner delis, even supermarkets are not allowed to sell it. You
need a retail liquor license, which is fairly strictly controlled and can be
worth a lot of money. "Hotels" (in this context meaning venues that were
typically once hotels but aren't any more) had 7 day liquor licenses for a
drive-in bottle shops (you can literally drive in and buy a carton of beer
through your car window) that were allowed to trade 7 days. Other liquor shops
could not trade on Sundays.

The value of this was so pronounced that the large supermarket chains would
pay millions to buy some of these hotels just for the 7 day retail liquor
license.

It's maddening.

The article mentions Germany. Switzerland has this too. The airports and
bigger train stations have extended hours so it's not unusual to see people
going to the airport on a Sunday to buy groceries (Swiss law may have changed
in the last 5+ years; it's been awhile since I've been).

~~~
eru
> The airports and bigger train stations have extended hours so it's not
> unusual to see people going to the airport on a Sunday to buy groceries
> [...]

Petrol stations as well.

------
cmrberry
Interesting that this still happens in the US. Although having lived in NJ for
a year, if Sunday shopping bans were to happen anywhere, the state with
horrible jug handle left turns seems a likely place.

------
madengr
The cities here the Kansas City suburbs banded together and told the state to
stuff their ban of Sunday liquor sales. I believe that law may still be on the
books, but the KS AG may not be enforcing it.

------
jmspring
On a recent trip, my free time in Tel Aviv was Friday and the first half of
Saturday, only to end up in Munich on Sunday. It put a damper on me getting
out and doing much if any shopping / exploring of stores (jet lag, didn't wake
up on Friday until nearly noon). That said, being forced to go out, walk
around, partake of cafes and parks wasn't a bad thing.

In some ways, I prefer that to what we have in the states.

------
Aqwis
The article notes that Germany bans shopping on Sundays. Indeed, many European
countries ban stores from being open at certain times of day or on Sundays.
For the sake of curiosity I will attempt to elucidate the various
restrictions, and exceptions to those restrictions, that we have in Norway.

* Since 2003 (before which stores could not be open past 21:00), there have been no restrictions on opening hours on weekdays. Most supermarkets and grocery stores in urban areas are open until 23:00 -- a few are even open around the clock. In a lot of Europe, the common closing time for grocery stores seems to be 21:00 or so.

* Stores are, in general, not permitted to be open on Sundays.

* Since 1998, stores with a floor area of under 100 square metres, and only those that primarily sell groceries, have been permitted to open on Sundays.

* For petrol stations, the floor area limit is 150 square metres.

* If a store is judged to be in an area of particular interest to tourists, it can open on Sundays regardless of floor area.

* Before major holidays, stores can open on Sundays regardless of floor area. My local grocery store interprets this as allowing it to open on all Sundays in December, but perhaps curiously, most stores do not seem to open on Sundays in December.

(* There might well be more restrictions and exceptions that I'm unaware of.)

* The current government planned to lift all restrictions on opening hours on Sundays, but after opposition from the major supermarket chains (virtually all supermarkets/grocery stores in Norway are operated by a handful of chains) the plans were put on ice.

A lot of this comes down to the contrast between the ostensibly rights-driven
American politics and the more consensus-driven politics in many European
politics. While in the US the government openly cooperating with major
businesses to ensure their smooth operation without any major disruptions
would probably be seen by the general public as corruption, it would not be
seen (and is not seen), in my opinion, in that way in much of Europe -- but
rather as doing what's necessary and natural to ensure the smooth functioning
of society. Not just with regards to the grocery stores themselves, but also
with regards to the values of society. A lot of people, even many who are not
religious, see the "resting day" as a value that's worth preserving, and
ditching it in favour of the right to keep your store open whenever you want
would widely be seen as very foolish.

------
jdonaldson
Most of the proponents of Sunday shopping pitch it as a personal freedom: You
should be able to go to the store and buy something if you want it.

However, it's not strictly a personal freedom since it involves another entity
: The store, and all of the supply chain involved in bringing you that good at
that time.

By saying one has the right to buy on a given day, one must also say that one
doesn't have the choice to sell on a given day. I realize that an employee
could just refuse to come in to work on Sunday in order to sell a product, but
that's just not a choice in many situations.

Finally, regarding small businesses getting hurt: I don't see an argument that
working an extra day will magically make them more profitable. If they're just
barely scraping by selling 6 days a week, I don't think they'll do much better
by working 7. In many cases, it could be argued that they're spreading 6 days
of profits over 7 days... meaning that they work more for less.

~~~
chrismcb
It is strictly a personal freedom. No one is forcing someone to sell. But if
enough people want to buy on Sundays enough people will sell on Sundays.

~~~
jdonaldson
I know you mean well, but I don't agree.

Buyers are usually individual/independent agents. Sellers are almost always
not (in large scale economies). At the very extreme "edge" of the seller's
supply chain are folks like cashiers and salesmen. They do not have a say in
the matter of whether or not they work their organization's business hours.
So, they have in fact lost their freedom. They have no choice but to sell.

~~~
Stratoscope
> I know you mean well...

Edit: I overreacted to that phrase at first, and thanks to david-given's
comment I'm changing my reply in the interest of a more civil discussion. (For
the curious, my original reply is quoted in David's comment.)

"I know you mean well" can easily be interpreted in a way that causes offense
even if you didn't mean any. To someone on the other side of the argument it
may sound like "You can be forgiven for your point of view, because you don't
know any better." (In fact I interpreted it that way.)

I know that's not what you said, and I'm not trying to put words in your
mouth. But an innocent comment can be taken in a way that you didn't intend,
so it's always good to think about how something will come across to the
people you're talking to. I have learned this the hard way many times myself.
:-)

So going back to your previous comment:

> By saying one has the right to buy on a given day, one must also say that
> one doesn't have the choice to [not] sell on a given day.

I doubt you will find anyone who opposes Sunday shopping laws claiming that
anyone has a "right" to shop on Sunday. Only that we have a right to not have
government arbitrarily interfere with private interactions like this.

The lack of a law prohibiting Sunday shopping does not create an _obligation_
on the part of merchants to be open that day. If that were the case, then
merchants would have to be open every day except the days the government
outlaws.

Consider B&H Photo in New York. They are quite happy to work Sunday. But they
do close Friday afternoon through Saturday to honor the Sabbath.

B&H also closes for Purim, Passover, Shavuos, Tisha B'Av, Rosh Hashana, Yom
Kippur, Succos (a full week!), and yes, Christmas.

Does B&H need a shopping law to enable them to close for these holy days? How
would a Sunday shopping law improve their freedom at all?

~~~
david-given
> That is a pretty offensive way to begin an argument. I recommend avoiding
> that phrase in the future.

So is this.

~~~
Stratoscope
That's a very good point! I should have left that comment out, or worded it
differently. Thank you for calling me on it.

~~~
david-given
Well played! That was precisely the response I deserved. (I posted that
comment while I was in a really bad mood, and regretted it instantly, and my
apologies.)

