NH Senate to consider repealing 'blue laws'

By KATHY McCORMACK

CONCORD, N.H.

When they were enacted in the 1800s, New Hampshire's "blue laws" restricted business activities on Sundays. There were a few exceptions, such as making "necessary repairs" on mills and factories, and selling milk, bread and other staples.

But the laws have since become obsolete. They could come a step closer to extinction Wednesday, when the Senate is scheduled to vote on a bill to repeal them. The repeal would take effect in July 2011.

"Many of us thought they had been repealed 30 years ago," said Rep. Carol McGuire, R-Epsom, who sponsored the bill to repeal prohibitions on Sunday business activities. "Sunday opening was a big deal then; Sunday opening was very controversial." Most businesses open Sundays in New Hampshire at the time were pharmacies and restaurants, she said.

McGuire's bill has already passed the House, and a Senate committee has recommended it pass that chamber. Gov. John Lynch hasn't indicated if he would sign the bill.

The blue laws allowed cities and towns to adopt bylaws and ordinances permitting and regulating retail business hours. As a result, some communities charge businesses a nominal fee to operate on Sundays. Salem, for example, charges a business $50 a year to open on Sunday, receiving about $15,000 from businesses.

McGuire suggests that communities raise their business licensing fees to incorporate the Sunday charge.

The old laws say that any retail business required to be closed on Sunday may not be opened for business on Memorial Day and Veterans Day until noon. They also say no person shall "engage in any play, game or sport" on Sunday. However, they allow horse and dog racing meets after midday, as well as public dancing.

"I don't like having unenforced laws on the books," McGuire said.

David Laband, a professor at Auburn University in Auburn, Ala., wrote the book, "Blue Laws: The History, Economics and Politics of Sunday-Closing Laws." He said blue laws date back to Roman times. They were imported into Colonial America and have been part of states' laws many years. But it's only been in the last few decades that states started getting rid of them.

Laband thinks the reason it became more acceptable for businesses to open on Sunday had to do with the growing number of women going to work in the 1960s and 1970s. Previously there had been at least one member of the family, usually a woman, who was available to shop any time during the week. The prohibition of shopping on Sundays didn't really impose a hardship on families, he said.

"Suddenly, both women and men really only had two days a week to go shopping, Saturday and Sunday -- and one of the two is off limits," Laband said. "At that stage, that really imposes an economic hardship on the family."