Court Opinion

ID: 9630371
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:09:35.933273+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:37.742204
License: Public Domain

NIX, Justice
(concurring and dissenting).
I cannot accept the reasoning of the majority that results in the approval of an exemption for stores employing less than ten persons and rejecting a classification based upon family affiliation. If the justification for *333the exemption approved by the majority (less than ten employees) is that small retail stores are significantly less offensive to the purposes sought to be achieved by the Sunday Trading Laws,1 the limitation of a family-operated business is as effective (if not more so) than the arbitrary selection of the number nine.
I subscribe to the views expressed by the late Justice Musmanno in Bertera’s Hopewell Foodland, Inc. v. Masters, 428 Pa. 20, 236 A.2d 197 (1967), that:
“Exception No. 2 is a humanitarian one. There are many small family-owned grocery stores from which a family derives its livelihood. It would be unjust to shut down this type of a store, while allowing the operation of marts which employ 9 persons. Since members of an immediate family do not, except in rare instances, go into an excessively numerous figure, there is no danger that a corner grocery store could swell into a mammoth supermarket manned by polygamists boasting hundreds of children.” Id. at 35, 236 A.2d at 205.
Accordingly, while I concur in Parts I, III and IV of the opinion of Mr. Justice Manderino, I must dissent from Part II. In view of my belief that the second exception is also valid, I have not considered the problem discussed in the opinion for the Court under Part V.
POMEROY, J., joins in this concurring and dissenting opinion.

. Act of June 24, 1939, P.L. 872, § 699.15 as amended 18 P.S. § 4699.15, recodified 18 P.S. § 7364. The question of the constitutionality of “Blue Laws” in general is not presented in this appeal. Appellant has limited his challenge to the validity of the statutory exemptions and my views have been confined to the narrow issue presented.