Drinking on a Sunday requires foresight: Minnesota law currently prohibits liquor stores from being open on Sundays. The blue law is the result of religious standards from earlier times.
On Feb. 4, 2012, Sen. Roger Reinert of the DFL introduced a bill he co-authored with republican Sen. Jeremy R. Miller to allow liquor sales on Sundays, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day.
Southwest Minnesota State University senior Tony Anderberg does not believe that allowing sales on Sunday would contribute to an increase in overall consumption.“I don’t really drink on Sundays anyways,” he said. “Usually I’m only buying alcohol on Thursday or Friday.”
Many bills have been penned attempting to quash the blue law, but they never get far. Bills to open up sales on Sunday appear in the Minnesota senate on a nearly annual basis.
The multilayered issue doesn’t divide squarely down party lines. Some republicans want the law done away with because it opposes free market standards. Many DFL members want to see any laws founded in religious beliefs thrown out of the state government. But the Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association, the state’s largest liquor lobby, opposes measures to remove the blue law every time they appear.
“Our association believes this would just amount to spreading out six days of profit over seven days,” said Scott Vanmore, manager of the Marshall Municipal Liquor Store, “and it may not be profitable to pay employees to be here if sales don’t increase enough.”
He feels his business would not experience a significant increase in sales if the bill were to pass.
Vanmore is also aware that this measure could be the first step of a process to open up wine and liquor sales in convenience and grocery stores. Besides losing customers to larger stores that can afford to offer lower prices, Vanmore said, “you’re going to lose control when you get liquor in convenience stores. There are lots of young employees; there can be a greater potential for crimes.”
“Because the law has been the way it is for so long, people are adapted to it,” said Vanmore. Anderberg agrees: “people are so engrained with the way things are that by now they know if they want to drink on Sunday they have to plan ahead.”
