Bob Barr

It's Time to Draw the Line on 'Blue Law'
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
December 27, 2006

Despite its blemishes, and notwithstanding the phenomenal and continuing growth of Big Government under both Republican and Democrat administrations in recent years, America remains the freest nation on earth. Yet, our country's love affair with freedom, while fading, has always been one marked by contradictions.

Indeed, even as Europeans braved huge odds and great peril to traverse the Atlantic to settle the New World and free themselves from the stifling religious and social straightjackets on which societies in the Old World were based, their early attempts at governance in the colonies were anything but free. Life in the early colonies was tightly regulated. Freedom of choice in many areas we today take for granted — what to teach, what to preach, what to sell, what to drink, even what words you could utter publicly — was nonexistent.

Many of the colonial-era edicts limited free choice and carried criminal penalties. One category of these "Blue Laws"— the prohibition on Sunday sales of alcoholic beverages — has been largely discredited and 47 states have repealed such laws. Unfortunately for those of us who might want to pick up a six pack or a bottle of merlot at the grocery store before tuning in to the menu of NFL games on Sunday afternoon and evening, Georgia is one of those three states that refuse to yield to freedom. Our state government insists still on prohibiting stores from selling beer, wine or other alcoholic beverages on Sunday. Indiana and Connecticut are the only other "Sunday Blue Law" states.

The anomaly presented by Georgia, one of the fastest growing states in the country and a state that has attracted more than its share of new businesses in recent decades, is obvious. The prohibition on Sunday retail sales of alcoholic beverages is cited frequently by consumers as an inappropriate and irrational limitation on their purchasing freedom.

A recent poll conducted by Atlanta-based Insider Advantage bore out the conventional wisdom that a majority of average citizens in our state no longer supports the idea that government should force retailers to prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages on Sundays. Nearly six out of 10 Georgia citizens polled in early December answered "yes" when asked if the legislature should pass a law allowing local communities to decide if they want to allow the retail sale of beer and wine on Sundays. When informed that Georgia remains one of only three states — and the only one in the South — that continue the total Sunday prohibition on retail alcohol sales, that number jumped to two-thirds of responders.

With such widespread public support against continuation of Georgia's Blue Law, and with the attendant awkwardness of being the only southern state still wedded to this vestige of Puritanism, will the Georgia Legislature in 2007 finally bring our state into the modern era, at least as regard to this question? After all, what passes for logic in the arguments against repeal of the Blue Law, is nothing but thinly disguised religious intolerance.

Of course, some Blue-Law proponents don't even try to hide the parochial nature of their desire to force nonbelievers into conformity. Sadie Fields, who heads the Georgia Christian Alliance, for example, says she and her group's members will continue to oppose a loosening of the prohibition on Sunday alcohol retail sales "for obvious reasons." One "obvious reason" is her belief that such legal prohibition "honor[s] God." Leaving aside the question of how forcing someone to thus "honor God"— as opposed to individuals voluntarily choosing to "honor God"— the other arguments anti-sales proponents employ are equally vapid.

State Rep. James Mills (R-Chestnut Mountain) harkens back to the "wisdom in our forefathers who put" such Blue Laws in place, as a reason he will "honor them." Basing our state laws on edicts laid down centuries ago by Puritan colonial leaders makes about as much sense as arguing that race should be an allowable factor in determining whether to serve a customer in a public facility in 2007 simply because it was legally permissible to do so many decades ago.

Some legislators opposed to Sunday retail alcohol sales — again, like Mills — cite the example of Truett Cathy, founder of Chick-fil-A, who continues to close all his stores on Sundays in observance of the Sabbath, as a reason to continue the legal prohibition on alcohol sales. The fact that there exists a difference between the owner of a private company deciding to close his own stores on Sunday, and the government forcing all stores of a particular type to not sell a particular product on a certain day of the week, is a nuance that apparently escapes such legislators.

Let us hope that an informed public will insist that members of the General Assembly exhibit a slightly greater degree of logic and sense of freedom if and when this issue comes before them in the coming session.

Bob Barr occupies the 21st Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy at the American Conservative Union Foundation.