Case Name: STATE of Louisiana ex rel. William J. GUSTE, Jr., Attorney General v. K-MART CORPORATION; K-Mart Discount Store No. 7386, 5990 Lapalco Boulevard, Marrero, Louisiana 70072; K-Mart Discount Store No. 7088, 1615 Westbank Expressway, Harvey, Louisiana 70058; K-Mart Discount Store No. 3423, 1400 South Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 70001; K-Mart Discount Store No. 7223, 7000 Veterans Memorial Boulevard, Metairie, Louisiana 70003; STATE of Louisiana ex rel. William J. GUSTE, Jr., Attorney General v. GAYLORD NATIONAL CORPORATION; Gaylord's Discount Department Store At 100 North Labarre Road, Metairie, Louisiana; Gaylord's Discount Department Store At 900 Manhatten Boulevard, Harvey, Louisiana; Gaylord's Discount Department Store At 2024 Belle Chasse Highway, Gretna, Louisiana; Gaylord's Discount Department Store At 755 Veterans Memorial Boulevard (Corner of Martin Behrman Street), Metairie, Louisiana. STATE of Louisiana ex rel. William J. GUSTE, Jr., Attorney General v. HOME DEPOT, INC. and the Home Depot Store At 62 Westbank Expressway, Gretna, Louisiana
Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Louisiana
Decision Date: 1985-01-14
Citations: 462 So. 2d 616
Docket Number: Nos. 84-CA-1565 to 1567
Parties: STATE of Louisiana ex rel. William J. GUSTE, Jr., Attorney General v. K-MART CORPORATION; K-Mart Discount Store No. 7386, 5990 Lapalco Boulevard, Marrero, Louisiana 70072; K-Mart Discount Store No. 7088, 1615 Westbank Expressway, Harvey, Louisiana 70058; K-Mart Discount Store No. 3423, 1400 South Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 70001; K-Mart Discount Store No. 7223, 7000 Veterans Memorial Boulevard, Metairie, Louisiana 70003. STATE of Louisiana ex rel. William J. GUSTE, Jr., Attorney General v. GAYLORD NATIONAL CORPORATION; Gaylord’s Discount Department Store At 100 North Labarre Road, Metairie, Louisiana; Gaylord’s Discount Department Store At 900 Manhatten Boulevard, Harvey, Louisiana; Gaylord’s Discount Department Store At 2024 Belle Chasse Highway, Gretna, Louisiana; Gaylord’s Discount Department Store At 755 Veterans Memorial Boulevard (Corner of Martin Behrman Street), Metairie, Louisiana. STATE of Louisiana ex rel. William J. GUSTE, Jr., Attorney General v. HOME DEPOT, INC. and the Home Depot Store At 62 Westbank Expressway, Gretna, Louisiana.
Judges: CALOGERO and LEMMON, JJ., dissent and assign reasons.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 462
Pages: 616–624

Head Matter:
STATE of Louisiana ex rel. William J. GUSTE, Jr., Attorney General v. K-MART CORPORATION; K-Mart Discount Store No. 7386, 5990 Lapalco Boulevard, Marrero, Louisiana 70072; K-Mart Discount Store No. 7088, 1615 Westbank Expressway, Harvey, Louisiana 70058; K-Mart Discount Store No. 3423, 1400 South Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 70001; K-Mart Discount Store No. 7223, 7000 Veterans Memorial Boulevard, Metairie, Louisiana 70003. STATE of Louisiana ex rel. William J. GUSTE, Jr., Attorney General v. GAYLORD NATIONAL CORPORATION; Gaylord’s Discount Department Store At 100 North Labarre Road, Metairie, Louisiana; Gaylord’s Discount Department Store At 900 Manhatten Boulevard, Harvey, Louisiana; Gaylord’s Discount Department Store At 2024 Belle Chasse Highway, Gretna, Louisiana; Gaylord’s Discount Department Store At 755 Veterans Memorial Boulevard (Corner of Martin Behrman Street), Metairie, Louisiana. STATE of Louisiana ex rel. William J. GUSTE, Jr., Attorney General v. HOME DEPOT, INC. and the Home Depot Store At 62 Westbank Expressway, Gretna, Louisiana.
Nos. 84-CA-1565 to 1567.
Supreme Court of Louisiana.
Jan. 14, 1985.
Rehearing Denied March 7, 1985.
William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Warren E. Mouledoux, First Asst. Atty. Gen., John R. Flowers, Jr., Barbara Rutledge, Kenneth C. Fonte, Louis M. Jones, Maureen Feran Freedland, Asst. Attys. Gen., for plaintiff-appellant in all cases.
Harvey C. Koch, Joe M. Inabnett, Gary J. Rouse, Margaret M. Groome, Harvey C. Koch and Associates, New Orleans for defendants-appellees in 84-CA-1565.
Terry J. Freiberger, Montgomery, Barnett, Brown & Read, New Orleans, for defendants-appellees in 84-CA-1566.
Robert E. Barkley, Jr., Francis R. White, III, Sessions, Fishman, Rosenson, Boisfon-taine & Nathan, New Orleans, for defendant-appellee in 84-CA-1567.

Opinion:
DIXON, Chief Justice.
In these three consolidated cases, the State of Louisiana, through the attorney general, appeals from the district court ruling decreeing the Sunday Closing Laws (R.S. 51:191-94) unconstitutional.
The' state filed a petition for injunction against each of the three appellees herein — K-Mart Corporation, Gaylord National Corporation and Home Depot, Inc. The petitions alleged that the stores were in violation of R.S. 51:194 by selling on Sunday certain merchandise prohibited by the statute; the petitions prayed that injunctions be issued enjoining the defendants from engaging in the sale of merchandise on Sunday.
The three cases were consolidated and set for a hearing on a preliminary injunction. Prior to the hearing, however, Gay-lord and Home Depot filed petitions for removal to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. The state district court, proceeding in the K-Mart case, then granted the state's request for a preliminary injunction; but at the trial of the permanent injunction, the trial court vacated its injunctive order and rendered judgment in favor of K-Mart declaring R.S. 51:191-94 unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, the United States District Court granted the state's motion for remand of the Gaylord and Home Depot cases. Subsequent to remand, the state district court handed down a similar ruling in the Gaylord and Home Depot cases declaring the Sunday laws unconstitutional. The three cases are on direct appeal to this court pursuant to Louisiana Constitution art. 5, § 5(D)(1).
The Sunday closing laws are compiled from old statutes and have withstood constitutional attack many times. State ex rel. Walker v. Judge of Section A, 39 La. Ann. 132, 1 So. 437 (1887) (Act No. 18 of 1886 does not violate the equal protection clause nor infringe upon the right to religious freedom); State v. Trahan, 214 La. 100, 36 So.2d 652 (1948) (exception permitting hotel and boarding house restaurants to sell wine with meals on Sunday does not constitute unjust discrimination against ordinary restaurants); State v. Wiener, 245 La. 889, 161 So.2d 755 (1964) ("wearing apparel" is not unconstitutionally vague); State v. Deutch, 245 La. 819, 161 So.2d 730 (1964) ("building supply materials" not unconstitutionally vague); State v. Scallon, 374 So.2d 1232 (La.1979) (Sunday closing law not a denial of due process or equal protection); Harry's Hardware, Inc. v. Parsons, 410 So.2d 735 (La.1982) (Sunday closing law not a denial of due process or equal protection).
R.S. 51:191 (Act 18 of 1886) declares that all stores and places of public business shall be closed on Sunday and supplies criminal sanctions for non-compliance; that section has not been amended. Section 192 contains the twenty-four exemptions listed in Act 18 of 1886, plus exemptions for art galleries (added in 1979) and the World's Fair (added in 1983). The exemptions range from "places of resort for recreation and health" to drug stores, livery stables, markets, hotels, book stores, restaurants, etc.
R.S. 51:193 (Act 146 of 1918) requires the Sunday closing of barber shops.
R.S. 51:194 was first enacted by Act 273 of 1962, and forbids the sale, by anyone engaged in the business of selling, of the following items: clothing or wearing apparel, lumber or building supply materials, furniture, home business and office furnishings, household, office, or business appliances and new or used automobiles or trucks. In 1972, 1977 and 1983, exemptions from the prohibition were added for sales in connection with mobile homes or real property, sales in the Vieux Carre, sales in "Catfish Town" in Baton Rouge and sales at the World's Fair. Act 273, unlike the previous act, provides for injunc-tive relief as well as criminal penalties.
Sunday closing laws are not, in themselves, unconstitutional. McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 81 S.Ct. 1101, 6 L.Ed.2d 393 (1961). The Fourteenth Amendment gives substantial latitude to the individual states in promulgating laws through their police power. State laws may be constitutional even if they create classifications of the affected constituency and result in uneven treatment to the different statutory classes. The legislature's wisdom in enacting such discriminatory laws will not be overridden if "any set of facts reasonably may be conceived to justify [the laws]." McGowan v. Maryland, supra, at 425-26, 81 S.Ct. at 1104-05.
Such justification is usually determined by an analysis of the law's purpose and of the means by which the purpose is carried out. If the purpose or effect of the statute is to discriminate against so-called suspect classifications, such as race or al-ienage, or involves a constitutionally protected area such as freedom of expression, the laws will be strictly scrutinized. If such suspect classifications are not involved, then the statutory means need only be rationally related to a legitimate statutory end.
In the words of the United States Supreme Court:
"When local economic regulation is challenged solely as violating the Equal Protection Clause, this Court consistently defers to legislative determinations as to the desirability of particular statutory discriminations. See, e.g., Lehnhausen v. Lake Shore Auto Parts Co. 410 U.S. 356, 93 S.Ct. 1001 [35 L.Ed.2d 351] (1973). Unless a classification trammels fundamental personal rights or is. drawn upon inherently suspect distinctions such as race, religion, or alienage, our decisions presume the constitutionality of the statutory discriminations and require only that the classification challenged be rationally related to a legitimate state interest. States are accorded wide latitude in the regulation of their local economies under their police powers, and rational distinctions may be made with substantially less than mathematical exactitude. Legislatures may implement their program step by step, Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641, 86 S.Ct. 1717 [16 L.Ed.2d 828] (1966), in such economic areas, adopting regulations that only partially ameliorate a perceived evil and deferring complete elimination of the evil to future regulations. See, e.g., Williamson v. Lee Optical Co. 348 U.S. 483, 488-489, 75 S.Ct. 461 [464-465, 99 L.Ed. 563] (1955). In short, the judiciary may not sit as a superlegislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of legislative policy determinations made in areas that neither affect fundamental rights nor proceed along suspect lines, see, e.g., Day-Brite Lighting, Inc. v. Missouri, 342 U.S. 421, 423, 72 S.Ct. 405 [407, 96 L.Ed. 469] (1952); in the local economic sphere, it is only the invidious discrimination, the wholly arbitrary act, which cannot stand consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment. See, e.g., Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U.S. 726, 732, 83 S.Ct. 1028 [1032, 10 L.Ed.2d 93] 95 A.L.R.2d 1347 (1963)." City of New Orleans v. Dukes, 427 U.S. 297, 303-04, 96 S.Ct. 2513, 2516-17, 49 L.Ed.2d 511 (1976). (Emphasis added).
In the instant case the law's stated purpose is to promote the health, safety and welfare of the citizens of this state and to inhibit unfair competition among the various businesses in the community. (Section 194(C)). There is no indication that the statute purports to do anything other than provide a day of rest for the state population employed in "places of public business." R.S. 51:191.
The trial court found that although such a statute might have been, in the Nineteenth Century, a necessary or rational means for providing a day of rest for workers, the statute now fails in its goal, since labor union rules and federal wage and hour laws prevent employees from working seven days per week. It is unnecessary to question the accuracy of the trial court's conclusions, for even if they are correct, a state legislature still has the prerogative to enact laws to ensure the health of its constituency in spite of union rules and federal laws and regulations designed to achieve the same end.
The trial court also found that the law's second purpose (preventing unfair competition) is thwarted by the numerous statutory exemptions to the statute. The court further found that the classifications and exemptions actually promote unfair competition since the scheme leads to situations where two stores, each selling the same merchandise, are treated differently — one is allowed to open while one is not.
This contention has already been disposed of by this court as containing no merit. In Harry's Hardware, Inc. v. Parsons, supra, at 737-38, it was stated:
"The exemptions created by the statute are those that the legislature deemed necessary to safely provide for the welfare of the public while mandating a forced closing of most businesses. Drug stores and public markets are exempted to allow the sale of medicine and food on Sunday. Funeral homes may remain open as the inevitability of death cannot be averted on Sunday. The exemptions for theatres, book stores and art galleries are consistent with the intent to provide a day of rest and recreation. Hotels are exempted to provide a place of residence for out-of-town visitors.
Each of the exemptions provided by the Sunday Closing Law is rationally related to the state's objective in enacting such a statute. The discrimination suffered by the plaintiffs hardware stores is a byproduct of a rational legislative scheme whereby the leisure and recreation of the populace is fostered without concomitant deprivation of access to essentials such as food and medicine. This discrimination does not become invidious merely because those drug and grocery stores which are allowed to remain open may also sell non-food and non-drug items. Although the plaintiff demonstrated substantial similarity between the inventory of its hardware outlets and the inventories of present day drug and grocery stores, we do not find that this similarity renders any statutory distinction between hardware stores and food or drug stores arbitrary and, unreasonable. While inventories may overlap, drug stores remain primarily retailers of pharmaceutical products and grocery stores remain primarily retailers of food items. To provide public access to precisely these essentials, rather than hardware or other non-food or non-drug items, drug and grocery stores may remain open on Sunday. We cannot say the legislature acted unreasonably or arbitrarily in treating food and drug stores in a different manner than hardware stores under the Sunday Closing Law."
The trial court also found that the Sunday laws are selectively enforced throughout the state and thus constitute a denial of equal protection. The court cited the fact that the attorney general's office does not initiate enforcement proceedings absent a citizen complaint. The trial judge also noted that numerous drug stores allowed to remain open on Sunday under § 192 advertise products prohibited for sale on Sunday by § 194 and yet no steps are taken to prosecute those stores.
A concept imbedded in our system of law enforcement is prosecutorial discretion. Prosecuting agencies have broad powers in deciding whether to institute a prosecution in a given case. However, as with any governmental power delegated to an agency or official, this discretion must not be used arbitrarily, capriciously, or maliciously, but rather must be used to further the ends of justice.
In the words of the United States Supreme Court, "the conscious exercise of some selectivity in enforcement is not in itself a federal constitutional violation." In order to find such a violation, it must be shown that "the selection was deliberately based upon an unjustifiable standard such as race, religion, or other arbitrary classification." Oyler v. Boles, 368 U.S. 448, 456, 82 S.Ct. 501, 506, 7 L.Ed.2d 446 (1962). See also United States v. Batchelder, 442 U.S. 114, 99 S.Ct. 2198, 60 L.Ed.2d 755 (1979); Bordenkircher v. Hayes, 434 U.S. 357, 98 S.Ct. 663, 54 L.Ed.2d 604 (1978).
Since there was no showing made by appellees that the instant prosecution was based upon such an unjustifiable standard, the trial court's ruling on this ground must be reversed.
The trial court's final ground for holding § 194 unconstitutional was that the statute is vague and, as such, fails to give reasonable notice of the prohibited conduct. In its reasons for judgment, the trial court stressed the evidence adduced at trial that even experienced law enforcement officials were unable to determine the particular items proscribed by the statute.
Since § 194 provides for criminal as well as civil sanctions, the statutory language must pass a strict vagueness test. The statute "must give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited, so that he may act accordingly." Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108-09, 92 S.Ct. 2294, 2298-99, 33 L.Ed.2d 222 (1972); for "no man shall be held criminally responsible for conduct which he could not reasonably understand to be proscribed." United States v. Harriss, 347 U.S. 612, 617, 74 S.Ct. 808, 812, 98 L.Ed. 989 (1954).
However, these strict standards are tempered by the fact that the regulations under scrutiny are economic in nature, directed not to the general populace but rather to individuals in the business community.
"... Thus, economic regulation is subject to a less strict vagueness test because its subject matter is often more narrow, and because businesses, which face economic demands to plan behavior carefully, can be expected to consult relevant legislation in advance of action. Indeed, the regulated enterprise may have the ability to clarify the meaning of the regulation by its own inquiry, or by resort to an administrative process.... " Village of Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc., 455 U.S. 489, 498, 102 S.Ct. 1186, 1193, 71 L.Ed.2d 362 (1982).
In any case, the enumerations in question do not pose a significant problem even for the non-sophisticate. Two of the categories have already survived vagueness challenges in this court. See State v. Deutch, supra, which held that the term "building supply materials" was not vague; and State v. Wiener, supra, in which the term "wearing apparel" was challenged.
As for the remaining categories, each is relatively easy to define with the help of a dictionary and commonsense. In cases where a certain item may straddle the fence and be susceptible of contrary interpretations, the proper test to be applied is derived from the overall purpose of the statutory scheme: that is, is the product necessary for the daily physical, intellectual, or emotional subsistence of a human being living a contemporary lifestyle such as, for example, foodstuffs, medication, newspapers or periodicals, hotels and restaurants; or is the item of such a nature that it can be bought at a later date with no harm to the physical, mental or emotional well being of the individual, such as furniture and appliances.
Accordingly, the ruling of the district court declaring R.S. 51:191-94 unconstitutional is reversed. The cases are remanded to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion, at the cost of defendants.
CALOGERO and LEMMON, JJ., dissent and assign reasons.
WATSON, J., dissents for reasons assigned in dissenting opinion in Harry's Ace Hardware, Inc. v. Parsons, 410 So.2d 735 (La., 1982).