Perspectives: No fooling, ‘wacky’ law bars Sunday car sales

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“Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.”
17^th Century English Poet & Playwright Joseph Addison (1672 – 1719)

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“It was the kind of Sunday to make me ache for Monday.”
American Author Joan Didion (1934 – 2021)

A few months ago, an article in the rechristened Minnesota Star Tribune newspaper summarized a number of unusual laws in this state. MaKayla Hart, “What Are Minnesota’s Wackiest Laws?” Star Tribune, Nov. 3, 2024.

The “looniest” laws described in the piece included outlawing wild hogs, barring teasing of skunks, prohibiting driving vehicles in neutral shift, restricting facilities from conducting Bingo to two games per week, and a host of other strange statutes, many of which were purged in the administration of Gov. Mark Dayton a decade ago.

But a number of others remain on the books, some of them are innocuous and others more significant.

One of the latter is a 67-year-old law barring sale of motor vehicles on Sundays by licensed dealers. The Sunday proscription on car sales attracted renewed attention seven years ago when the state lifted its 159-year-old ban on off-sale liquor sales by Minn. Stat. § 349.144.

The never-on-Sunday statute is hardly unique. Similar restrictions on automotive transactions on the Christian Sabbath are in existence in 12 other states, including neighboring Wisconsin, Iowa, and North Dakota. The laws do not affect private party sales not conducted by licensed dealers.

What better time to look at one of those “wacky” measures than today on the eve of April Fools’ Day, Tuesday April 1 and with the annual Twin Cities Auto Show about to begin its nine-day run at the Convention Center in downtown Minneapolis on Friday, April 11th.

Anachronism appearance

The Minnesota law and parallel ones in the dozen other jurisdictions appear to some to be an anachronisms that, on the surface, seem 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 nearly 7-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.

Transferring titles

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.

Money 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 nearly three decades ago, in Kirt v. Humphrey, 1997 WL 561249 (Minn. Ct. App. 1997)(nonprecedential), 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 Supreme 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.

Undertaking ‘uniformity’

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 undertaking review of a challenge to a 1967 state law barring many retail transactions on Sundays in a case titled 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.

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 proscription for car sales in Minnesota, now commemorating its 68th anniversary, may exemplify the adage “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”

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PERSPECTIVES POINTERS

It happened on a Sunday

• American independence approved (two days before Declaration): 1776
• End of Civil War: 1865
• Pearl Harbor attack: 1941
• Beatles U.S. debut: 1964
• First Super Bowl: 1967
• President Ford pardons Richard Nixon: 1974

Marshall H. Tanick is an attorney with the Twin Cities law firm of Meyer Njus Tanick, PA.