Jewish Organizations Assail Sunday Closing Laws at U.S. Supreme Court

Two major human rights organizations have filed a brief in the United States Supreme Court which holds that state laws banning business activity on Sunday are in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Arguments on the case began today.

The amici curiae brief, submitted by the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, argued that Sunday closing laws are contrary to those clauses of the First Amendment “which prohibit an establishment of religion and guarantee its free exercise.” The organizations also stated that such laws “violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment unless they completely exempt from their strictures these who observe another day of the week as their holy day.”

The state of Massachusetts is petitioning the United States Supreme Court to reverse an earlier U.S. District Court ruling that a Massachusetts Blue Law was discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional. The law had prohibited people who observe their Sabbath on Saturday from doing business on Sunday. Under this statute, Police Chief Raymond P. Gallagher of Springfield had prosecuted the manager of a supermarket for keeping open on Sundays.

The majority opinion in the District Court had said: “What Massachusetts has done in the statute is to furnish special protection to the dominant Christian sects which celebrate Sunday as the Lord’s Day, without furnishing such protection, in their religious observance, to those Christian sects and to Orthodox and Conservative Jews who observe Saturday as their Sabbath and to the prejudice of the latter group.”

AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE AND A. D. L. PRESENT ARGUMENTS

In the amici curiae brief, the AJC and ADL argued that Sunday closing laws violate the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion. “When the state aids and supports specific religious denominations by selecting their day of worship as the day for general observance, the status and dignity of the other religions are thereby impaired,” the brief stated.

“Adherents of minority religious groups, and particularly their children, are constrained in the free and open practice of their religious rights when the state places its stamp of approval upon the religious practices and customs of the religious group which happens to be in the majority. Thus, an inferior status is imposed by the state upon some religions and the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom is violated,” the brief emphasizes.

The two Jewish organizations also stress in their brief that “when a retail establishment belonging to a Christian may be open for business six days a week, a similar establishment belonging to a competitor who observes the Jewish Sabbath can be open only five days a week.” They point out that Orthodox Jews are constrained from shopping “on the only day of the weekend which would be available to them for that purpose.”

The brief also argues that the Sunday closing laws are contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment which states “no state shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” These laws, the brief continues, violate this clause “since the state by preferring the holy day of one religion necessarily discriminates against all others…Clearly, any state Sunday law must provide an exception as broad as the prohibition for those who observe a different day as their holy day to comply with the Fourteenth Amendment’s ‘equal protection’ clause.”