The charge that Sunday “blue laws” are a violation of religious liberty and of separation of church and state was voiced here today by Dr. Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress.
Addressing 1,000 members of the Association of Jewish Court Attaches in the Commodore Hotel, Rabbi Prinz urged that Orthodox Jews, Seventh Day Adventists and other Sabbatarians be granted exemptions from the bans on Sunday sales in New York and New Jersey. Twelve states already grant exemptions from their Sunday-closing laws to Sabbatarians, he said. He listed them as Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma and Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Many Western states have no laws banning Sunday business, Dr. Prinz stated. Among them, he said, are California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming. Any law that requires the Sabbath of one religion to be observed by all the people, Dr. Prinz declared, is “plainly a violation of the Constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. It also serves to erode the American principle of separation of church and state. Sunday laws are religious laws designed to protect the Sabbath of one religion at the expense of other religions,” he asserted.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
