Liquor flows, but still no car sales on Sunday in Minnesota

Marshall H. Tanick//September 7, 2022

Illustration of a red rectangle with "CLOSED SUNDAY" inside it as though it were from a stamp

Depositphotos.com image

Marshall H. Tanick//September 7, 2022

“[N]ever ever on a Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, cause that’s my day of rest”

Connie Francis, “Never On Sunday” song (1961)

As the professional football season starts, stadiums across the country will be filled on Sundays, including U.S. Bank in downtown Minneapolis for Sunday’s opening game between the Minnesota Vikings and rival Green Bay Packers.

Meanwhile, many stay-at-home fans will be scurrying around loading up on alcoholic beverages to enjoy with the games on television. They will be able to stock up on liquor on Sundays as a result of a law enacted a little more than five years ago, Minn. Stat. § 340A.414, repealing the 159-year-old ban on liquor sales on Sunday (and most national holidays, too). Like some other prior never-on-Sunday proscriptions, the liquor proscription became defunct when the new law went into effect on the July 4 weekend that year. To achieve passage, after being stalled for many years, the new law overcame opposition from some religious quarters as well as small and midsize outlets, many of them family-owned, fearing competitive advantages for large retailers, among other forces.

But one citadel that has yet to fall is the prohibition on sale of vehicles on Sundays.

Similar to the former never-on-Sunday liquor law, a measure has long been on the books proscribing licensed vehicle dealers from doing business on that day, although its lineage only dates back to 1957, a century after the liquor limitation. But the compulsory closure does not extend to other days, including holidays like Labor Day, when a number of dealerships in the Twin Cities were open this past Monday.

Repeal ripe

The 65-year-old Minnesota law, Minn. Stat. § 168.275, is one of only about a dozen of its kind in the country, including similar proscriptions in neighboring Wisconsin, Iowa, and North Dakota. It appears to some to be an anachronism that, on the surface, seems ripe for repeal in light of changes in society, consumer shopping practices, and the momentum of the liquor law saga, among other matters.

But not so fast. Because the liquor ban is quite different from the prudent 6-decade-old prohibition on selling, or buying vehicles on Sundays, and demise of the former does not warrant setting aside the latter.

One significant difference between alcohol and automobiles is the way the respective businesses are conducted. Purchases of vehicles, usually costing many thousands of dollars, often require financing by banks or other financial institutions. But nearly all of them are closed on Sundays, either by federal and state laws and regulations or custom, except for slight consumer transactions at a handful of grocery store chains and those ubiquitous ATM machines. The general unavailability of financing on Sundays makes many car sales infeasible, if not impossible on that day. In contrast, it’s a peculiar purchaser of liquor indeed who needs outside financing. Buyers of alcohol who require a bank loan to make the purchase have a lot of problems besides finances.

Title transfers

Another notable difference between Sunday transactions of liquor and vehicles is that cars and trucks require transfer of titles and other governmental registration requirements as well as insurance. But the offices that handle those matters at state, county and local levels and in the private sector are closed on Sundays, impeding the finalization of transactions on those days. In contrast, liquor buyers need not register anything with anybody, just open the bottle or pop the cork and start pouring and drinking.

Further, the ban on car sales on Sundays does not prevent all business practices from occurring. Consumers can still look around most car lots and kick the tires, so to speak, in shopping around for the vehicle they would like to buy, comparing models, prices, and the like before returning to the dealerships to take a test drive and consummate a deal during the coming week. Window shopping on Sundays is not much solace to those wanting to imbibe booze on that day or serve it to others.

It’s a rarity for someone to desperately seek to purchase a vehicle on Sunday, unless perhaps they need a getaway car for a bank robbery, but even that won’t work unless they plan to pull a heist at one of those ATMs.

Moreover, the Sunday ban only applies to licensed dealers. Private parties can still sell, and purchasers buy, used vehicles on any day of the week and at any time.

Multiple motivations

A key undergirding of the liquor-sale ban was religious in nature — an aversion by many from the pulpit to the pews to countenancing the indulging in alcohol on the Lord’s Day. But that premise does not underlie the prohibition of vehicle transactions. Similar to a number of other so-called “blue laws” in Minnesota and elsewhere, the law forbidding car sales stems from multiple legally permissible motivations.

As described in court testimony of Hy Berman, the late iconic history professor at the University of Minnesota, the prohibition was prompted by secular considerations spearheaded by the nascent labor union movement of the late 19th century agitating for reduction of the then-prevalent excessive working hours imposed on employees. Under the rubric of the “40-hour work week,” workers and their advocates successfully obtained passage of legislation requiring many business operations to be shuttered on Sundays, giving employees a respite from oppressive working conditions.

Enactment of minimum wage and overtime compensation measures at federal and state levels have undercut some of the economic rationale for the proscription, but it still retains vitality today.

In litigation two decades ago, in a case titled Kirt v. Humphrey, 1997 WL 561249 (Minn. Ct. App. 1997)(unpublished) both the Ramsey County District Court and Minnesota Court of Appeals rejected the argument that the Sunday car-sale ban is an improper religious-oriented measure or discriminates against those who celebrate the Sabbath on different days or not at all. Rather, they uniformly regarded the Sunday closure law as a “rational” economic measure that does not infringe any constitutional rights of aspiring purchasers or sellers of vehicles, a proposition that a court in Texas agreed with a decade later (albeit with a Saturday closing option) and which, most notably, the U.S. Supreme Court had recognized in 1961 in upholding Sunday “blue laws” in a number of states against a strong, but unsuccessful constitutional challenge on religious grounds. The high court, in a decision written by Chief Justice Earl Warren in a quartet of consolidated cases titled McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420 (1964), reasoned that the “blue laws” were not grounded on religious reasons but were secular attempt to provide a uniform day of rest for all citizens in order to advance the “health, safety, recreation, and general well-being” of everyone.

‘Uniformity’ undertakings

In the car case, the Minnesota appellate court picked up on this “uniformity” theme, viewing the Sunday no-sale measure as an undertaking to assure “uniformity” in sales practices. It was, the court explained, motivated by car dealerships in the Minneapolis and St. Paul, which had many dealerships in those days and saw Sunday sales in the rural areas and growing suburban markets as an unfavorable competitive force. This motivation made the measure a “rational” economic enactment, not an impermissible ecclesiastic one.

The Minnesota Supreme Court reached a different outcome in a challenge to a 1967 state law barring many retail transactions on Sundays in a case entitled State v. Target Stores, Inc., 156 N.W.2d 908 (1967) although that case turned on other constitutional considerations. Addressing a “test case” concerning the Sunday sales proscription, the justices in St. Paul viewed the hodgepodge of varied goods and services that were illegal to be sold on Sundays (cameras and luggage could not) and those that were allowed (film, purses and wallets were OK), the justices found the law too “vague and uncertain” to be valid, paving the way for widespread retailing on that day.

But, for vehicles, it’s still been never on Sunday in Minnesota since the era when cars had fins in the rear and guzzled a gallon of gas nearly every 10 miles or less. Speaking of economics, the car ban has important fiscal features. Allowing Sunday transactions would, many in the industry feel, create a big commercial advantage for large multifacility dealerships in the Twin Cities to the detriment of smaller, mainly family-owned enterprises in Greater Minnesota, whose customer base could be more easily lured to the metropolitan area to shop for cars on that day, a characteristic generally not present in the off-sale liquor business.

Not much outcry

Finally, unlike the liquor law limitation, which had been the subject of substantial dispute and legislative debate for several years, there does not seem to be much outcry from the public or solons to lift the proscription on Sunday vehicle sales.

Further, with the COVID pandemic accelerating online sales by such companies as Carvana, vehicles transactions can be undertaken just about any time 24/7.

The Sunday no-sale situation for cars in Minnesota, now commemorating its 65th anniversary, may exemplify the adage “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”

There is yet a final reason not to allow most vehicle sales on Sundays. Now that liquor is legal, it can be hazardous to allow drinking and driving on Sundays.

PERSPECTIVES POINTERS

Some items whose sale was formerly prohibited under Minnesota Sunday “blue law”