As of July 1, you may now buy booze on a Sunday in Colorado. It’s great for consumers, but I know not everyone wanted this law to pass. I have a Denver friend who owns a mom-and-pop wine shop and I know she wasn’t thrilled about having to be open on a Sunday. And maybe she won’t be.
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When I lived in Gulf County, Florida, no booze at all could be purchased on a Sunday.
Where I am now, in Nassau County near Jacksonville, I can buy a bottle of wine with my groceries at 10am.
In some of our stores, they cover the alcohol with tarps until legal sellin’ time on Sundays. Just so you won’t be tempted.
Just as bad and equally annoying is not being able to launch until after 7:00 AM because the marina can’t start selling booze before then.
We have the no alcohol before noon here too. I was getting some beer for a party once on Sunday and got to register at 11:50AM. The cashier explained that their registers wouldn’t even ring it up until after noon so I had to wait around 10 minutes. I believe most politicians fear the potential backlash of trying to get them repealed.
Still, the law makes no sense. Presumably, the law is for Christians who should have their asses in church on Sunday morning anyway. I’ve actually suggested only half-jokingly that the law is in place to make sure there’s some booze left at the stores when they get finished with their worship services.
When I was in grad school in Bloomington, Indiana, in addition to no alcohol sales on Sundays, there were no alcohol sales on Election Day. (I’m guessing this was to discourage overzealous campaign workers from buying votes with beer.)
Of course, as Bloomington is a college town, they are pretty hardcore about checking IDs. I’ve been carded in a supermarket there (at age 26) while attempting to buy a 6-pack of IBC root beer, which is sold in brown glass bottles. I had to call it to the cashier’s attention that root beer is, in fact, nonalcoholic.
Or an even better example of blue laws having strange effects: my in-laws lived in Bergen County NJ for many years, and there are very restrictive blue laws there banning most retail sales on Sundays. Periodicals are exempt, so you can buy the Sunday newspaper. Also magazines.
Yes, you can buy Playboy, but not the Bible, on Sundays.
hi
as folks have mentioned here…
how in the world can you NOT interpret the no booze before noon (or whatever) on Sunday only as religious based?
Like other have said…I’d sure like to hear a secular reason for it…
if it was everyday for social good…maybe…dry county for social good…maybe
and to me its way WORSE (in both a practical and philosophical way) than something like a nativity scene at the courthouse…if that rubs you the wrong way…look away, move on, get over it…
no booze on Sunday morning? that is ACTIVELY preventing me from doing something that is legal at any other time…
And the shop keepers who like it so they can be closed…if the law is repealed, there is nothing to keep them from closing anyway…its only their “greedy” behinds that keep them open…heck find some Sunday heathens to work the joint.
And the ones that would grip most about it are the ones that push for free markets and fair market practices…
Blll
Sheesh, our fearless leader is giving millions of our tax dollars to church groups under his faith based initiative and people are upset because they can’t buy beer for a few hours on Sunday. I guess you have to hit the taxpayer where it hurts to get them riled up…
I remember getting screwed by MA blue laws on any number of occassions.
“This is going to be the best 4th of July BBQ ever!”
“Do you have beer?”
“No, we’ll pick some up later.”
“Well…you better get going if you want to make it to New Hampshire and back before the party.”
“?”
“It’s Sunday dude…”
“!!!”
FTR, jt, it isn’t a state law - there’s no statute on the books regarding sales of alcohol on specific days other than election days- but a widely enacted county (or municipal, if Delray is incorporated) provision.
Alcohol can be sold in Dade County more or less 24-7, but is restricted everywhere else.
And next time you’re more than welcome to come over and borrow a case or two if you don’t mind the drive 
In Virginia, no beer or wine may be sold in stores between midnight and six a.m., any day.
When I was in college in the late 1970’s the stores could not sell anything not deemed to be a “necessity” on Sundays.
Beer was not a necessity. Cokes and Ho-Ho’s were a necessity. Tampons and other female hygiene product were also not a necessity!!!, although it was fun to argue that one with the clerks.
Once I was in line behind a woman with a small child. The child was sitting in the kiddie seat of the shopping cart with a can of Play-Doh in his hands, which Mom intended to buy for him. Of course, as Play-Doh is not a necessity the clerk had to take it from the child and reshelf it, which set the kid off screaming and crying. However, I reassured the clerk that the good lord would’ve sent her to hell if she let the kid have his Play-Doh.
Of course, this was in the day before bar code scanning so the clerks could ring it up if they really wanted to, (although they might have to fudge a code) so I felt perfectly justified in giving the checkout clerks a hard time.
One DID let me purchase a children’s book about Jesus on a Sunday, but I had tried to purchase the book just for the thrill of having the checkout girl tell me I couldn’t buy it.
I think blue laws are pretty much stupid and only having warm beer in the grocery stores is out-and-out retarded. However, your example here of what you can and can’t do is misplaced, I think. It’s no more legal for you to drive drunk than it is to buy beer on Sunday.
Even if it’s not legal, in that situation it’s still logistically feasible to drive drunk, but not to buy package goods. Stupid, no?
If I recall correctly, the courts have held that, while the blue laws were originally based in religious practice, they currently fulfill a secular purpose (day off for the stores, etc.). This is bullshit, of course.
Courts have held that blue laws are okay if they fulfil a legitimate secular purpose, not because. A day off for stores is a reasonable, though specious, secular purpose. Keeping people from drinking on the Sabbath is not.
See
I think thats what really gets many peoples goat so to speak.
A day off for stores is about as bogus an argument as it gets (IMHO). If the store wants to be closed…it sure as heck CAN be if the owners want it.
If its an everyday restriction, or a dry county, or even maybe a weekend/holiday restriction (due to the night before or morning of bingers)…there is some secular/good of society logic to it.
And the give the businesses a day off business is bogus on at least two counts. Most places that sell the stuff sell OTHER stuff all Sunday morning anyway…and like I said before, nutin is keeping them from not selling the stuff or closing for whatever period of time THEY think is appropriate if they so choose…
I think that myself, like many others, are not even remotely convinced that this is and ONLY is a religious based law whose ONLY basis is religious. Or in other words NOT something like laws against murder or building codes that CAN be reached/defended on some other basis than religion.
Maybe some poster will convince us heathens yet…
take care
Blll
As a semi-humorous aside, I would like to insert my story of how blue laws actually interfered with my (Christian) religious practice.
One Sunday, when I was in high school, the church I attended had a number of small crises all in one morning. First, there was a huge flood in the men’s bathroom, then the power went out. Since the kids’ Sunday School classes met in the basement (without windows), we had to shuffle classes around and the teen Bible study had to leave its usual location. So my class that morning was five high schoolers and a youth minister huddled around a space heater in the senior pastor’s office.
A few minutes into class, someone pulled the youth minister out of the room with a very serious look on her face. When he came back, he told us that, on top of everything else, the altar guild had misplaced a bottle of wine for Communion. (Of course, we immediately made cracks that we’d stolen it and had been passing it around when he wasn’t looking.)
He told us that they’d actually been calculating how long it would take to drive to Wisconsin to get a bottle of wine! They eventually decided against it. I don’t quite remember, but I think they ended up diluting the wine with the grape juice (we used both at Communion) to make it last. The youth minister recommended we sit towards the front if we were planning to go to Communion.
On topic, I really don’t see the need for blue laws. How can something suddenly become harmful to buy one day (or half a day, etc.) of the week?
Frankly, if you can’t get to Sunday noon without a beer, you’re an alcoholic.
Sine that IS funny…thanks
Let me share a side of blue laws that isnt.
My sister in her very young adult years had a job a grocery store.
Some guy comes up to buy beer. He looks pretty old, but she cards him anyway. Yep he is about as old as he looks. Sells him the beer.
A bit later, the manager asks if she sold some beer. Yep, she did. Apparently it was a bit before the magical hour on Sunday. She was fired on the spot. Now, the end of that job probably didnt wreck her career train, but at the time she was pretty unsure/insecure, so that certainly didnt help matters any.
Ifffffff I remember correctly, no one had even TOLD her about this blue law retardation…
Hell, these days with how serious they take alchohol sales, she’d probably end up with a gawd awful fine or jail time…
Grrrrrr yet again
Blll