Posted on 11/25/2005 5:48:22 PM PST by SmithL
BOSTON - Massachusetts' attorney general is launching an investigation into several supermarkets that stayed open opened on Thanksgiving in defiance of the state's Puritan-era Blue Laws.
The laws were passed in the 1600s to keep colonists at home or in church on Sundays. Parts of the laws, such as the ban on Sunday liquor sales, have been repealed, but a prohibition on most stores doing business on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day, has not.
"If these stores want to open, there's a way to do it: Change the law," David Guano, a spokesman for Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, told The Boston Globe. The office didn't say what sort of penalty the stores could face.
The Globe reported that at least six stores, all Super 88 Markets, were open on Thanksgiving. One Super 88, in Quincy, shut down after a visit from police that day.
Reilly's office had earlier warned the Whole Foods supermarket chain not to open on Thanksgiving after a competitor complained. Wal-Mart, Family Dollar and Big Lots also received warnings.
Super 88 officials said they didn't know about the warnings.
"We don't celebrate" Thanksgiving, said Rudy Chen, a former manager of a Super 88 in Chinatown who now works at the chain's headquarters. He said the store he managed was always open on Thanksgiving and no one complained.
The "defiance of blue laws" must mean voting Republican in Mass.
"several supermarkets that stayed open opened on Thanksgiving"
Now THAT I wish I had seen.
This is the same Attorney General of Massachusetts who wants in-state tuition for illegal immigrants. (Seems he's selective about which laws he enforces.)
http://www.miracoalition.org/index.pl/press/press-releases/press-release--atty-general-tom-reilly-joins-immigrant-students#DQNhCSKN8pPlzJ_cztBhPA
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1513442/posts
no, almost all the stores that were Super 88s which is an asian chain store (that i love BTW) all over the greater boston area. I think the point of enforcing the law is to have it repealed. There is really no point in enforcing this law this one year on a store that has everything priced in chinese. The people going to those stores dont even celebrate thanksgiving.
Even the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had the sense to find these laws unconstitutional in 1978 or 79.
its a chinese chain store where you rarely if ever see a non asian and all the signs and prices are in chinese. Not much use for non asians.
I remember going into a Chinese restaurant in a chinatown (not SF) one time and being the only white guy there. It was WONDERFUL food though.
I can read Korean, but those Chinese characters are too much.
Rielly is running for Governor, he will quickly realize the large voting block of Asians he has pissed off, and forget about this.
Which is sad seeing how Thanksgiving is an American holiday and being that they live in America they really should celebrate it.
If I were in any position to do so, I would break every blue law, then take it to court and sue any agency that got in my way.
I am positive I would win... these laws are not just unconstitutional on their face but also enforced sporadically, which also violates the spirit of justice.
Oh the horror. Ted Kennedy drives drunk, kills people, walks free, and THESE are the "criminals" that need prosecution.
Whoever is pushing this overreaching prosecution should go have a same-sex Mass-acre "marriage" with themselves.
Connecticut still has our liquor-related blue laws on the books. No alcohol sales after 8 PM (9 PM now for some stores) and not at all on Sunday. I remember in college my friends and I made several 9 or 10 PM trips to Massachusetts to buy beer because someone forgot about Connecticut blue laws...
Our supermarkets in CT were all open yesterday, though.
Why don't they celebrate? Aren't they in America?
There Constitutional in New Jersey
Capitalism! Not in my state!
- Thomas F. Reilly
Mass. has Blue Laws? What a joke.
While I have been fully assimilated, I dont really celebrate thanksgiving either. I guess i do when i am with friends who do. A couple of things would probably be a barrier to entry, first the traditional thanksgiving food is not even remotely like what asians eat. The funny thing is everyone celebrates X-mas though. I think the problem with thanksgiving is that it is linked to a certain kind of food which is alien to many immigrants. I dont really know, I am just guessing.
heh, until last year you couldn't sell alcohol on sundays at all and they actually enforced that one.
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