Court Opinion

ID: 9683599
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:32:41.718346+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:48.962653
License: Public Domain

Carter, J.,
concurring.
This court in. the past has sustained Sunday closing laws as a proper exercise of the police power. Arrigo v. City of Lincoln, 154 Neb. 537, 48 N. W. 2d 643; Stewart Motor Co. v. City of Omaha, 120 Neb. 776, 235 N. W. 332; City of Omaha v. Lewis & Smith Drug Co., Inc., 156 Neb. 650, 57 N. W. 2d 269. In Skag-Way Department Stores, Inc. v. City of Grand Island, 176 Neb. 169, 125 N. W. 2d 529, and in the instant case, we have indicated the propriety of Sunday closing laws, but held them unconstitutional on the ground of a want of uniformity because of unreasonable classification. The question immediately arises as to whether or not a valid Sunday closing law can be drawn to meet the requirements of uniform classification. This, I think, requires a reexamination of our previous holdings.
The early cases in this country sustained Blue Laws providing for Sunday closing on the ground that it was within the police power to provide for a day of religious worship in that it promoted the health, peace, and good order of society. But underlying all attempts to enact Sunday closing laws under the police power, Sunday as a day of rest for closing is designated even though a day of rest could well be any day in the week. The modern trend in the cases is to the effect that laws requiring closing on Sunday as a day for religious worship are contrary to the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States prohibiting any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Inherent in these holdings is the fact that many religious groups do not observe Sunday as a day for religious worship. This has resulted in the making of exceptions in Sunday closing laws for members of these groups to close on days other than Sunday and compensation for their economic loss by being *528permitted to remain open on Sunday. It represents an attempt to use the police power of the state to enforce a religious holiday and provide by law one day each week for religious worship. It is now generally recognized that this approach cannot be sustained under the police power.
It is most difficult to accept the logic that Sunday closing laws have any relation to public safety, health, morals, or welfare. At least it is difficult to see why Sunday is different than any other day as it relates to police power regulation. In the Stewart Motor Company case, supra, decided in 1931, this court recognized the problem when it said: “If the question were new, we might feel more inclined to draw the lines a little more closely than they have been drawn, * *
With the change in judicial decisions which have abandoned the theory that the maintaining of a day of worship, by law, has no legal basis for support, the problem is more complex. Sunday closing laws were then enacted under the police power on the basis of providing a uniform day of rest, excepting from its provisions businesses, occupations, and professions which were necessary to be open on Sunday, and Sabbatarians recognizing days other than Sunday for religious worship. The difficulties with Sabbatarians whose day of religious worship was other than Sunday continued as before. The businesses, occupations, and professions which were necessary to remain open on Sunday provided difficulties in law enforcement in that what is necessary and what is not was extremely difficult of legislative ascertainment.
Legislatures over the country then attempted to solve the matter by the commodity approach. But with the coming of the chain store, and the intermingling of goods in businesses that were formerly engaged in sales of merchandise in one particular line or field, the problem became so complex that the commodity approach was beyond solution. As examples, drug stores sold *529groceries, grocery stores sold hardware, and chain stores sold groceries, drugs, garden tools, and most anything else that could be crowded into the place of business. Difficulties arose about remaining open to sell permitted commodities and at the same time being prevented from selling prohibited commodities. Contradictions that were completely ludicrous resulted. Under some laws a store could sell camera film but not a camera; it could sell lipsticks but not a mirror; it could sell comic books but not toys; it could sell a pet bird but not a cage. Untangling the perplexities of such a situation is comparable to untangling a barrel of fishhooks. The commodity approach became confusing, irrational, and inconsistent when measured by the yardstick of uniform classifications.
We are now in a position where we must face the facts that now exist in our more complex social and economic society. ¿ The real purpose of Sunday closing laws is not to protect religious worship, or to provide a uniform day of rest, or to provide family unity. Its real purpose is to enlist the power of the state to protect narrow commercial interests, influenced by the fierce competition between the discount store and the downtown merchants. But assuming that a Sunday closing law did forbid all secular activity on Sunday, there is still the question of whether, by law, the state should ever interfere with matters of private conscience.
The time has come, in my opinion, to take a fresh approach to the question of Sunday closing laws. A logical argument can be made that Sunday closing is a matter of conscience and that it is the function of religious organizations to secure voluntary closing on the day of religious worship by persuasion and not by law. The impracticability of classifying by the business or commodity approach is almost insurmountable. Sunday closing laws at their best, when grounded on the police power, are bottomed on a weak legal basis. While I agree with the majority opinion, it does leave the im*530pression, approved by this court, that Sunday closing laws are proper subjects of legislation but, at the same, time it strikes, down the act on the basis of discriminating classifications, when proper classifications appear to border on the impossible.
I submit that our holding that Sunday closing laws are a proper exercise of the police power is a rather meaningless holding if no way is left open by which the power may be exercised. It is for this reason that I think the court should reexamine its previous. decisions in the light of changed conditions. It would appear that if this is not done, the Legislature, in the absence of a new legislative approach, is faced with a hopeless task in drafting a Sunday closing law that will meet constitutional objections.