Court Opinion

ID: 9701627
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:28:00.900448+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:25.994666
License: Public Domain

Daley, J.,
concurring. I concur with the views and the result reached by my associates in the main opinion.
I would point out that the legislative act in question is constitutionally infirm inasmuch as it impacts upon areas of personal privacy and freedom. Though directed toward the conventional police power concerns of the public health and welfare, the act trenches upon areas ordinarily reserved for individual autonomy, i.e., what people should be free to do with themselves on Sunday. See Vornado, Inc. v. Hyland, 77 N.J. 347, 380, 390 A.2d 606, 623 (1978) (Handler, J., dissenting).
*275Sunday is a shopping day for a great many people, and for those who are so minded this activity, depending upon individual circumstances, is necessitous, convenient, diversionary and recreational, at bottom reflecting the myriad of personal wishes and subjective choices of individuals. Id. at 381, 390 A.2d at 624 (Handler, J., dissenting); id. at 369, 390 A.2d 618 (Pashman, J., dissenting).
The effect of the Common Day of Rest Act is to allow Sunday shopping provided it is done in a limited group and type of stores, during forty-eight Sundays of the year. This to me is an unwarranted, unjustified regulatory act. It transgresses the proper role of the police power, of protecting the public safety, health and welfare. The police power is not a license to organize individuals by governmental fiat.
The public should not be restricted in their freedom of choice — to relax or to shop in the absence of an adequate governmental justification in the face of public need. Such justification and need has not, in my opinion, been demonstrated.