There are blue laws for some types of store in the next county from us in NJ. It’s not mainly if at all a religious thing. As was said, it’s small businesses whose owners don’t want to work 7 days a week, as competitive pressure would tend to force otherwise. However it’s obviously not a dramatic impact if one county has it and the next doesn’t. It’s not a visibly different ‘way of life’ in the two counties.
Those laws show how much inertia rules the political system. The small businesses in places where it disappeared long ago for whatever reason aren’t successful in instituting it anew. But in the places where it is, they make it hard to get rid of.
It’s like no self service gas in NJ. If some article here reports a proposal to eliminate that law, there will always be a long comment thread of ‘regular folks’ railing how it would ‘kill jobs’, is just based on ‘greed’ etc. But in the 48 (I think it is) other states with no such law, are the same kind of ‘folks’ agitating to do away with self service? Not anywhere I’ve ever heard of.
Hornbacher’s is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. (I think they are closed on New Years. 4th of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
Generally, those blue laws didn’t apply to grocery stores – legislators didn’t want to deprive people of food. Sometimes certain areas of the store, like if they sell alcoholic beverages, would have to be closed on Sunday.
North Carolina just eased one of their Blue Laws that forbid Sunday morning sales of alcohol using the justification that people wanted mimosas with their Sunday brunch. If that’s what it took, that’s fine.
Back in the 80’s there was a situation in Massachusetts where grocery stores weren’t allowed to be open on Sunday (or maybe just Sunday morning) and the big grocery stores supported the law. The reason was the bigger stores would just open anyway and pay the fine. The fine was big enough to keep the small stores closed and the bigger stores picked up enough business to pay the fine and still come out ahead.
It’s the same in Indiana. NO booze on Sundays, nossir, not ever. And even on non-Sabbath days, buying cold beer cannot be had but from state-sponsored liquor stores, whom are consequently disallowed from selling soda, mixers, snacks, etc…you have to get those next door at the gas station.
Warm beer at Kroger 6 days a week. Nothing on Sundays…EXCEPT for bars that somehow PROVE that they derive 50% or more of their profits from food. THEN it’s okay to drink hard liquor and drive home. Makes sense.