Abstract
This LL.M. thesis argues that state Sunday closing laws, commonly known as "blue laws," violate the First Amendment, advancing beyond the permissible "verge" of state power identified in Everson v. Board of Education . The work analyzes four landmark 1961 Supreme Court decisions — McGowan v. Maryland , Two Guys from Harrison-Allentown, Inc. v. McGinley , Braunfeld v. Brown, and Gallagher v. Crown Kosher Super Market — in which the Court upheld Sunday laws as valid civil regulations. Tracing their history from medieval England to modern America, the thesis contends that the purported secularization of such statutes through legislative exceptions reflects the changing tolerances of dominant Christian denominations rather than a genuine shift to civil purpose. Using Establishment Clause frameworks, including the "primary purpose and effect" test, neutrality principles, and doctrines from Walz v. Tax Commission and Lemon v. Kurtzman, this thesis concludes that blue laws uniquely endorse a specific religious belief and should be held unconstitutional.
Repository Citation
Young, Emmett N., "Beyond the Verge of Religious Establishment: The Sunday Closing Laws" (1971). LLM Theses and Essays. 336.
https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/stu_llm/336