Blue law
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Blue law is the US term for laws enacted to promote or enforce the moral standards of a religious group. In majority-Christian countries they usually take the form of laws restricting or barring the sale of alcoholic beverages on Sunday, or restricting or barring businesses from being open at all on Sunday.
The trend over the past few decades has been to repeal blue laws, although many still remain on the books. The strictest blue law still in effect is in (of all places) New Jersey. Bergen County, New Jersey contains a high concentration of high-end shopping malls, which attract shoppers from New York City taking advantage of lower state sales taxes. This has motivated residents to retain the county's law banning sales of just about everything on Sunday, despite many referenda to repeal it. The blue law is estimated to cost the county millions of dollars in lost business and sales taxes, but there's a compelling case to be made that keeping New Yorkers away for at least one day a week is worth it.
Some blue laws, such as those preventing automobile sales from being conducted on Sundays, were pushed forward not by religious groups but by local industry leaders, to give them a day off and ensure that no other competitors would be open on that day as well.
Whether or not the NFL had anything to do with these laws is fair game for speculation.
[edit] See also
- National Sunday law: A Seventh-day Adventist conspiracy theory about Sunday blue laws in the United States.
- Prohibition
- Teetotalism