Blue Law - United States

United States

Many states still prohibit selling alcohol for on and off-premise sales in one form or another on Sundays at some restricted time, under the rationale that people should be in church on Sunday morning, or at least not drinking.

Another feature of blue laws in the United States restricts the purchase of particular items on Sundays, which is an unusual feature in modern American culture. Some of these laws still restrict the ability to buy cars, groceries, office supplies and housewares among other things. Though most of these laws have been relaxed or repealed in most states, they are still strictly enforced in some other states.

Some states still prohibit hunting in various degrees on Sundays.

Blue laws may also prohibit retail activity on days other than Sunday. In Massachusetts and Connecticut, for example, blue laws dating to the Puritans of the 17th century still prohibit most retail stores, including grocery stores, from opening on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Read more about this topic:  Blue Law

Famous quotes related to united states:

    Falling in love with a United States Senator is a splendid ordeal. One is nestled snugly into the bosom of power but also placed squarely in the hazardous path of exposure.
    Barbara Howar (b. 1934)

    In a moment when criticism shows a singular dearth of direction every man has to be a law unto himself in matters of theatre, writing, and painting. While the American Mercury and the new Ford continue to spread a thin varnish of Ritz over the whole United States there is a certain virtue in being unfashionable.
    John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

    The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.
    Maya Angelou (b. 1928)

    The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. A Galileo could no more be elected President of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of soft illusion.
    —H.L. (Henry Lewis)

    In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.
    John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)