What Are ‘Blue Laws’—and Why Did America Adopt Them?

Blue laws are statutes that, throughout American history, have restricted certain activities—most famously shopping, work and alcohol sales—on Sundays and other designated days of observance or rest. For generations, they shaped the rhythms of American life, dictating when businesses could open, what goods could be sold and how communities spent their leisure time. Though many have been rolled back or unevenly enforced, blue laws remain a shorthand for the ways law has been used to regulate morality and public behavior.

American blue laws, also known as Sunday laws, date back to the colonial period. Patterned on existing English laws, they were intended to enforce the biblical commandment to “remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” These laws forbade certain activities on Sundays, including “worldly labor” and traveling.

Virginia enacted the first Sunday law in the American colonies in 1610. It ordered every man and woman to “repair in the morning to the divine service” on Sundays; law breakers could be fined, whipped or even executed. Other colonies followed suit. Massachusetts, for example, enacted a law in 1671 banning unnecessary work, travel and “sports and recreations” on Sundays. As Alexis McCrossen writes in her book Holy Day, Holiday: The American Sunday, Sunday observance was “common” but not “uniform” in colonial America. 

Many people today associate strict blue laws with New England Puritans, but this association is often overstated. Puritans were not alone in regulating Sundays: Quakers in Pennsylvania, Catholics in Maryland and Anglicans in the South all adopted their own Sunday laws.

The origin of the term “blue laws” is uncertain. According to one popular theory, the term comes from the Blue Laws of Connecticut, a collection of the colony’s laws drafted in 1655 and printed on blue paper. This was not the original title, however; the work only became known as Blue Laws of Connecticut many years later. According to another theory, opponents of strict New England puritanism may have coined the term “blue laws” as a pejorative description of the Connecticut law code. “Blue,” in the parlance of the time, meant “rigid, gloomy, over-strict,” according to one 19th-century edition of the code. (“Bluenose” was slang for a prudishly strict person.) Later interpretations referred to the laws as banning immoral, or “blue,” activities. 

After American independence, Sunday laws remained, although they were sometimes contested and not always strictly enforced. For example, in the early 19th century, evangelical Christian reformers clashed with the United States Postal Service over Sunday opening hours. People would gather at the post office to play cards and socialize on Sundays when taverns were closed; carriers delivering the mail also violated state laws prohibiting Sunday travel. 

According to McCrossen, one unfortunate Pennsylvania postmaster, Hugh Wylie, found himself expelled from his own Presbyterian congregation in 1808 for delivering mail on Sundays, as his job required. In response, the U.S. Congress passed an act mandating mail delivery seven days a week. Sunday mail delivery was finally eliminated in 1912 by an alliance of Christian groups and labor organizers advocating for a six-day work week. 

Blue laws have varied by state and municipality. Oklahoma state and city laws have, at one time or another, banned recreational activities as wide-ranging as bowling, hunting, bingo, billiards, boxing, moviegoing, horse racing, card playing, cockfighting, dancing and raffles. In 1926, the town of Bethany restricted candy sales, jazz music and the wearing of superfluous jewelry. 

In the mid-20th century, despite the efforts of some religious reformers, states and towns began to repeal many of their blue laws. At the same time, the Supreme Court upheld their constitutionality. In McGowan v. Maryland (1961), the Court ruled that Sunday laws could serve a legitimate secular purpose, as a day of rest to improve the “health, safety, recreation, and general well-being” of all Americans, not just certain Christians. 

As baseball grew in popularity in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, blue laws prohibited most games on Sundays. Baseball teams that tried to get around these restrictions occasionally ran afoul of law enforcement. On a summer Sunday in 1917, the New York Giants and Cincinnati Reds met for a game to honor the soldiers of the 69th Infantry Regiment of New York, who were shipping off to fight in World War I. Police arrested both teams’ managers at the Manhattan ballpark, but a sympathetic judge threw out their case. New York legalized Sunday baseball two years later. Pennsylvania became the last state to allow Sunday baseball in 1933, although the Keystone State enforced a Sunday sports curfew of 7 p.m. until 1959. 

Many archaic state and local blue laws have been repealed. The ones in force today no longer compel citizens to attend church. Most commonly, they restrict the sale of goods like alcohol and cars on Sundays. Some of the most restrictive blue laws in the country are in effect in Bergen County, New Jersey, where malls close on Sunday and most retail activity is banned.

Advocates of modern blue laws argue that they promote the health and well-being of the community by limiting Sunday traffic, reducing alcohol consumption and protecting workers’ right to rest. Hundreds of years after the first blue laws, Americans are still arguing over whether, and how, to promote Sunday as a day of rest.