Everyone who lives in Bergen County is somewhat aware of “blue laws” which ban all sales of clothing, furniture, and appliances on Sundays, posing as a major inconvenience to many residents. While certain items like food and gasoline can be sold, people who wish to buy the banned items on a Sunday must drive out of Bergen County or not shop at all.
Bergen County’s blue laws should be abolished because they hurt New Jersey’s economy, create an annoyance for Bergen County residents, and hurt New Jersey’s Orthodox Jewish population.
Blue laws hurt the economy because they encourage people to shop elsewhere. For example, take a person who needs clothes who lives in Demarest, New Jersey, but it is a Sunday. Even if the person prefers going to the Garden State Plaza for shopping, they might go to the Palisades Center instead because it’s not closed. The revenue and tax from that purchase then goes to New York state businesses instead of Bergen County, New Jersey businesses. Because of this, blue laws actively hurt Bergen County and the state of New Jersey since they take away revenue.
Another reason blue laws are a negative is that they are annoying for Bergen County Residents to deal with. Take someone who lives in Demarest and needs new workout clothes, and they want to try them on in person, but it is a Sunday. If it were a Saturday, they could just drive to Target or Lululemon in Closter Plaza, which is a 5-10 minute drive depending on where they are. However, since it’s a Sunday, the next closest option that remains open due to not being in Bergen County is the Palisades Center, which is around a 20-minute drive away. Because of Bergen’s blue laws, this person, with exactly what they want, 5-10 minutes away, now has to travel twice as far just because it’s a Sunday, which is extremely annoying and inconvenient, and worse for CO2 emissions because of the longer drive.
Additionally, it hurts the large Orthodox Jewish Community (of roughly 18,500 people) in Bergen County. Orthodox Jews keep the Sabbath on Saturdays, which prohibits nearly everything besides going to synagogue and resting, but most notably driving. Combined with the fact that Bergen County stores are closed on Sundays, Orthodox Jews cannot shop at all in Bergen County on the weekend. This places incredible strain on their schedules since any shopping has to be done during the work week for them, unless they are willing to drive further out.
People’s main defense for Bergen County’s blue laws is supposedly less traffic. While this is true for Sundays, traffic becomes twice as bad on Saturdays. Anyone who has been to the Garden State Plaza in Paramus on a Saturday knows that traffic going there is awful, and the parking lot is always full because people do all of their shopping on that Saturday. Any supposed benefit to traffic is cancelled out since the traffic is just moved to Saturday. While some people also believe that blue laws are important because stores close on the Christian Sabbath, even without blue laws, stores that want to close on Sundays still can. Patrons who follow the sabbath can also choose not to shop on Sundays, similar to what Orthodox Jews do.
The solution to all these dilemmas is incredibly simple: get rid of the blue laws forever. By getting rid of the blue laws that plague Bergen County, it will increase revenue, help the Orthodox Jewish community, and most of all make the lives of Bergen County residents significantly easier.
