No Sunday baseball, booze sales, rioting... Ohio long history with 'blue laws'| Mike Curtin

For many Ohioans, Sunday remains a day of rest. For others, it invites shopping, recreation, and entertainment.

For a long time, there was no choice.

Sunday closing laws, commonly called blue laws, are among the oldest in history and remain in some states, parts of Canada and some European countries.

Historians trace them to Roman emperor Constantine, a Christian convert who decreed on March 7, 321 that work should cease on Sunday, except essential farm labors.

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If the Almighty rested after six days of creating all there is, who are mortals to question the mandate?

Blue laws spread across the western world. The American colonies inherited them from England. Pioneers took them into the Northwest Territory, whose 1788 edict set aside “the first day of the week as a day of rest from common labor and pursuits.”

After Ohio was formed in 1803, lawmakers enacted a series of blue laws. An 1809 version outlawed “sporting, gambling, rioting, quarreling, hunting, horse racing, shooting or common labors” on Sundays.

A century before Prohibition, lawmakers added alcohol sales to prohibited Sunday activities. In the mid-1800s, with the rise of the popularity of baseball, it too made the list of Lord’s Day no-nos.

Enforcement of blue laws was left to local authorities. As a result, it varied from town to town, from strict to nonexistent. In harsher areas, conducting business on Sundays invited arrests and fines.

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In 1834, the Ohio Supreme court upheld the state’s blue law as a legitimate exercise of legislative power. In subsequent decades, self-appointed enforcers dedicated themselves to exposing the unholy.

Among them was the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1874 in Cleveland to promote abstinence from alcohol. But the WCTU could not overlook the evils of Sunday baseball, which was attracting larger crowds.

In 1889, worried about strict local enforcement, the Cincinnati Red Stockings moved a home game against the Brooklyn Dodgers to neighboring Butler County.

A decade later, on April 19, 1898, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld Sunday closing laws and threw a knockdown pitch at baseball.

“This statute under discussion does not forbid or interfere with anyone in the ‘worship of Almighty God according to the dictates of his own conscience.’ We have never heard the contention, and do not expect to hear it, that playing baseball is an act of worship, which the conscience of anyone requires to be performed on Sunday,” the court ruled.

However, time was on the side of baseball. In 1911, the state legislature declared Sunday baseball no longer a criminal offense, unless it was played before noon.

Over the next five decades, nearly three dozen bills were introduced in the Ohio General Assembly to modernize the blue law. Except for some tweaks, such as allowing attendance at fairs, the general ban remained.

Until 1960, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider challenges to state blue laws. Finally, on May 29, 1961, in McGowan v. Maryland, the court upheld Sunday closing laws in three states.

With federal relief foreclosed, the fight over blue laws remained in the states. In Ohio, the big fight occurred in 1962.

The Lawson Milk Company, based in Cuyahoga Falls in Summit County, gathered nearly 350,000 signatures to qualify for the Nov. 6 ballot a proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution to legalize Sunday sales. For 23 years, Lawson had been operating on Sundays in Ohio, but tired of blue law enforcement at some locations.

Led by the Ohio Council of Retail Merchants, the state’s retail establishment vigorously opposed the amendment, siding with churches and labor unions. “Let’s keep Sunday – Sunday,” the council argued.

By 57-43, Ohio voters agreed.

Yet more and more Ohioans shopped, played and sought amusements on Sundays. By the early 1970s the blue law was nearly forgotten.

Feeling safe, after a century and a half, the Ohio House (62-32) and the Ohio Senate (25-6) repealed the law.

It died Nov. 21, 1973.

Mike Curtin is a former editor and associate publisher of the Columbus Dispatch, and a former two-term state lawmaker who served on the Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Booze to baseball: Ohio's long history with Sunday 'blue laws'| Opinion