Bergen’s Blues
We’re the only U.S. county that still bans shopping for nonessential items on Sundays, via our 321-year-old blue laws. Should the “day of rest” become like all the rest?
It’s just another day at American Dream: a gaggle of teenage girls stalking the aisles of H&M, their male counterparts eyeing the edgy tees at A Bathing Ape, a pair of stylish young salesmen lounging outside Ferrari, and a curious family lured into Gentle Monster by the animatronic bison at the door. Except that it’s not just another day—it’s a Sunday, and if you know Bergen County, you know that shopping for anything beyond necessities like food and pharmacy items is strictly banned on Sun-days by the county’s so-called blue laws.
American Dream has gotten around those laws by claiming it’s not subject to them at all, since, like nearby MetLife Stadium, the country’s second-largest mall sits on land owned by the state—more specifically, by the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority (NJSEA). What some consider American Dream’s flouting of the blue laws has been ongoing since early 2024, and it’s raised the ire of some Bergen County officials, especially those in mall-packed Paramus. It’s also raised anew the question of whether the blue laws, originally enacted in the 1700s, make any sense at all in the 21st-century retail landscape.
WHAT ARE THE BLUE LAWS?
The term “blue laws” refers to any legal prohibition of activities on a religious day of rest. Laws designed, in the words of the Fourth Commandment, to “keep the Sabbath holy” date back to at least the 12th century in England, and the first such law in America was enacted in the colony of Virginia in 1610, mandating attendance at Sunday service, once in the morning and again in the afternoon. Punishments for ignoring the law included public whipping and death.
New Jersey’s blue laws have their origin in a 1704 statewide Sunday ban on all business transactions, leisure activities and nonessential travel, codified in 1798 as the Act to Suppress Vice and Immorality. It survived into the mid-20th century, with occasional amendments; in 1959 the state legislature amended it yet again, to allow each county the ability to enact or repeal it. In the intervening years every county but Bergen opted for repeal. Blame it, if you like, on Garden State Plaza, which on opening in 1957 must have sent shivers down the collective spine of the county’s small retailers, who perhaps imagined what it would mean for their day of rest if their behemoth of a competitor were to open on Sundays. This kind of retail anxiety was particularly acute in Paramus, home to Garden State Plaza and, today, three other major malls, which may explain why the town passed its own, even stricter, blue law in 1968.
Twice, in 1980 and 1993, Bergen residents went to the polls to decide whether to repeal the blue laws, and twice the laws were upheld. (The state suspended them temporarily in 2012 after Superstorm Sandy.) A new vote might yield a different result: A poll undertaken earlier this year by northjersey.com showed a slight majority of readers—53 percent—in favor of rescinding the laws. On the other hand, notes Anthony Russo, president of the Commerce and Industry Association of New Jersey, “there’s no official campaign to change the law at the moment,” and without one, Bergen’s ban will continue to thwart Sunday shoppers in search of underwear, immersion blenders, a new coffee table or a used SUV. (Perhaps to counter the potential stress engendered by such prohibitions, the laws do permit the buying and selling of alcoholic beverages.)
Should the blue laws remain? Bergenites make telling arguments on both sides of the question.
WHY KEEP THE BLUE THE LAWS?
• They offer a day of rest—from traffic. Few resi-dents who embrace the blue laws today cite suppres-sion of vice and immorality as a reason for doing so.
Traffic, in fact, may be the No. 1 factor that’s kept the laws in place for so long. Lisa Lovermi, a Fair Lawn resident, no doubt speaks for many when she says, “It’s such a pleasure to travel on Sundays, with little or no traffic.” That sentiment runs especially deep in and around Paramus, routinely plagued by mall traffic, particularly on Saturday. In a recent interview about his beef with American Dream, Paramus Mayor Chris DiPiazza noted that the blue laws afforded residents “the ability to move around town” on Sundays.
• They give small retailers half of the weekend off. Typically, the county’s smallest retailers close for two days of the week, usually on Sundays and Mondays, which at least allows them one full day to spend with family. Rescinding the blue laws would put economic pressure on many of them to open, and work, on Sundays and/or pay others to work that day.
• They remind us of a slower, less consumption-oriented way of life. Recently, the Facebook group Englewood Today asked readers to weigh in on the blue laws. Resident Rhonda Harris responded that the laws were “the only thing left that reminds me of growing up in Bergen County” when “things were different, we walked to church; after, we played outside with neighbors and [had] dinner at Grandma’s with cousins.”
Nicole McGarry, who works at Garden State Plaza, appreciates getting Sundays off. “It’s kind of a nice part of history that we’ve gotten away from everywhere else,” she says. Lovermi agrees: “I believe everyone should have a day of rest on Sunday, to spend time with the family and for a day of worship.”
WHY JUNK THE BLUE LAWS?
• They hurt the county’s retailers. Hobbled by the internet, still smarting from the pandemic, many of Bergen’s small retailers are struggling to stay afloat. And while Garden State Plaza consistently ranks among the most successful malls in the country, not all of Bergen’s malls are retail powerhouses. Given the challenges, it’s easy to understand why many of the county’s shopkeepers would prefer to see the blue laws go the way of public flogging. T. H. Irwin is the owner of T. H. Experiences, a company that runs special events in northern Bergen County that allow local owners to showcase their businesses—but rarely on Sunday. “Most employees are used to having Sunday off and just don’t want to participate on that day,” she explains. She’d like to see an end to the blue laws. “I can shop on Amazon any day,” she says. “Why wouldn’t retailers want to take advantage of that same opportunity?”
It’s true that some consumers in Bergen restrict their brick-and-mortar shopping to Saturdays and weekdays. Others, however, get around the Sunday ban by shopping in adjacent counties. “For retailers who want to sell their goods on Sunday,” says Russo, “that represents missed opportunities and lost sales.” It also likely represents lost revenue for the state. Back in 2011, for example, the Christie administration claimed that the blue laws cost the state $65 million in annual tax revenues.
• They make traffic worse on Saturdays. Diane Huenerberg recently moved to Midland Park from Monmouth County and was stunned at what she calls “the maddening ordeal” of driving to Paramus on a Saturday. Then someone explained to her about the blue laws. “I can’t help thinking it would be a lot better if people could go to the malls on Sunday as well,” she says—the idea being that fewer folks would then shop on Saturday, reducing Saturday traffic.
• They violate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. Some detractors of the laws argue that the assumption at their root—that Sunday is the Sabbath and should be a day of rest and worship—vio-lates the separation of church and state upheld in the so-called Establishment Clause of the Constitution’s First Amendment. The Supreme Court has ruled se-veral times affirming the constitutionality of blue laws, most notably in the 1961 landmark case McGowan v. Maryland.
Still, critics note that the U.S. is a far more multicultural—and multi-religious—nation today than it was in the 18th century, and not every religion observes the Sabbath on Sunday. Notably, Bergen is home to New Jersey’s largest Jewish population, for whom the Sabbath begins on Friday night at sundown and continues until sundown on Saturday. And for the county’s 18,500 Orthodox Jews, representing 3.3 percent of the population, shopping on Saturday is not an option. “It’s discriminatory,” says Carol Rauscher, executive director of the North New Jersey Chamber of Commerce. On a recent Sunday at American Dream, Orthodox Jewish families made up a noticeable segment of the shopping population, and perhaps as a testament to that, signs posted throughout the mall directed shoppers to eateries where they could find kosher meals.
• They’re a major hassle for shoppers. Lori Stein wanted to buy a hair dryer. She verified online that Sephora was open on Sundays, then went to the Edgewater store, a few miles from her home in Fort Lee. Sephora had plenty of hair dryers in stock, but they weren’t for sale, not that day—because unlike foundation, foot masks and facial serums, appliances fall under the blue laws’ definition of “no-nessential.” “I had to go back the following week for something that had been right there in front of me,” she says. “It’s nuts.”
Leury Pichardo of Saddle Brook shares that sentiment. “Sometimes I go to Walmart to buy certain items,” he says, “and totally forget that what I’m looking for can’t be purchased on Sundays since that area is closed off.”
“It’s very stressful,” says Rauscher, noting that parents who work Mondays through Fridays have to rush around on Saturday to buy things like DIY supplies, new clothes for the kids and appliances like hair dryers—not to mention pick up their dry cleaning.
The alternative, of course, is to find those items in another county, but for many Bergen residents, that too is an inconvenience. Rutherford native John Blank says that buying plants this past Mother’s Day was a challenge: “I couldn’t go to Lowe’s because Lowe’s in East Rutherford was closed. On Sundays, if I want plants, I’ve got to go to Clifton or Secaucus or Jersey City because I can’t shop in Bergen. It doesn’t make any sense.”
FOREVER BLUE?
American Dream isn’t the first retail outlet in Bergen to defy the Sunday shopping prohibition, though it’s certainly the largest. In fact, a handful of small shops have been doing it for years, risking punishments that range from a $250 fine (for a first offense) to six months in jail (for a fourth). Though Paramus officials have threatened to sue the megamall, they haven’t yet done so at the time of this writing.
Some business leaders, Rauscher among them, believe that, American Dream notwithstanding, Bergen’s blue laws are so entrenched that they’re unlikely to be rescinded. “People here don’t know another way—those laws go way back,” she says. Others disagree, and still others see a path forward that doesn’t necessarily involve ditching the laws countywide. A leader in Bergen’s business community, who asked not to be identified, suggested that the most equitable approach might be to allow each municipality to decide for itself, via referendum, whether to open on Sundays. “Main Street businesses are struggling,” he noted. “If municipalities want their downtowns to open and sell things that have historically been banned on a Sunday, why shouldn’t they?”
WHY ARE BLUE LAWS BLUE?
No one knows for sure how the blue laws got their colorful name. One theory is that the laws (usually referred to in plural, even when only a single law is being referenced) were so named for the blue paper they were originally written on or the blue binding that contained them. Except, notes online debunker snopes.com, there’s no evidence to support the claim. A slightly more likely explanation is that “blue” describes the vice and immorality that the 1704 law sought to suppress. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest known usage of “blue” to mean “coarse” or “obscene” occurred in 1818. In the 20th century, vaudevillians who relied on obscenity for comic effect were described as “working blue,” and pornographic films were known as “blue movies.” The first use of the term is also disputed. A 2007 article in the Vanderbilt Law Review claimed that it arose during the colonial period, though others trace its initial appearance to a 1781 book, A General History of Connecticut, by the Rev. Samuel Peters, in which the author writes of “Blue Laws; i.e. bloody Laws; for they were all sanctified with whipping, cutting off the ears, burning the tongue and death.”
BY LESLIE GARISTO PFAFF
