New Jersey town sues mall for ignoring Blue Laws and selling merch on Sundays

Paramus is suing the nation’s second-largest mall, American Dream, for keeping its stores open on the Sabbath

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Several states still have archaic “Blue Laws” on the books, forbidding the sale of certain items like liquor on Sunday mornings. (North Dakota, for example, use to ban retailers from being open on Sundays. That was only changed in 1991, and even then, most stores could only be open after noon. It wasn’t until 2019 that the law was repealed entirely, though some Republicans are still trying to reinstate it.)

Why bother doing this? Because Sunday mornings are reserved for Jesus, dammit, and we can’t have any distractions like open stores that might lure people away from church.

Bergen County, New Jersey is one of the richest counties in the country, but voters there have opted to maintain the state’s Blue Laws even as the other 20 counties chose to ditch them entirely. That means outside of buying food or gas, you really can’t go shopping in the county on Sunday. That’s especially true in the city of Paramus, where the restrictions are even stricter on that day, shutting down all stores that don’t sell food.

Paramus’ laws literally say that if any businesses were allowed to be open on Sunday, other businesses would be pressured to open as well, and that would lead to the “physical and moral debasement” of those who run the stores while “impinging upon the peace and quiet and rest” of those who live in the community. (They also say opening stores on Sundays would lead to more traffic.)

So what do you do if you run the second-largest mall in the country, with an indoor ski slope and water park, but you are located in East Rutherford… which is in Bergen County?

That’s the dilemma facing the owners of the American Dream mall. At first, when the place opened in 2019, the owners promised to keep retail stores closed on Sundays even if the indoor theme parks stayed open. But earlier this year, a local news outlet reported that retails stores were indeed open in the mall on Sundays—and they had been for quite some time.

Inside the American Dream mall (screenshot via YouTube)

County officials are not pleased with American Dream's decision to stay open and have vowed to fight what an emailed statement from county official Derek Sands called a “disregard” for the blue laws.

“Its violation gives American Dream Mall tenants an unfair advantage over all other Bergen County businesses lawfully complying with state law,” the statement reads.

In May, when Bergen County officials asked the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority to enforce the Blue Laws, the state told them it wasn’t their responsibility. The attorney general’s office didn’t clarify the matter for the press.

It basically looked like the mall—including the retail stores—was going to stay open because Sundays are great for business and they were daring county officials to fight them on it.

So the county is now going to court.

Last week, the Borough of Paramus sued everyone they could think of in the Bergen County Superior Court. The defendants include Ameream, LLC (which owns the mall), the New Jersey Sports And Exposition Authority, the Borough Of East Rutherford, and the County of Bergen.

These [retail] businesses with the encouragement and support of the mall’s ownership and the acquiescence of the other defendants here, have violated the law hundreds if not thousands of times since January of this year.

The behavior of these scofflaws is not without consequence. Along with hefty criminal fines, the Blue Laws declare that any property that engages in more than four illegal sales on any Sunday is a public nuisance and can be shut down.

This action seeks to enforce the law and the will of the citizens of Bergen County by declaring the American Dream Mall a public nuisance and directing the defendants to ensure that the law is obeyed.

It’s a lawsuit written with all the energy of an old man yelling at a cloud. Hilariously, they complain about how the mall’s website says the 120 stores inside are open on Sundays—and they include a picture of the mall itself advertising that fact:

Just first class trolling right there.

The mall owners say all of this is just a matter of jealousy and the county has no right to impose its will on them because the mall sits on state-owned land:

A statement from American Dream argued that Bergen County’s blue laws don’t apply to the complex, because it sits on state-owned property.

“The lawsuit is a meritless political stunt driven by private competitors’ interests,” the statement says.

As NorthJersey.com reports, that argument is also the reason “that one could buy Jets or Giants T-shirts at [nearby] MetLife Stadium during a Sunday football game.”

That said, when the mall’s owners were trying to win approval from the state to begin building the complex over a decade ago, they assured state regulators that they would comply with “existing blue laws that limit and preclude certain retail shopping activities on Sundays.”

It’s hard to imagine the mall will face any real consequences for the crime of… selling things on a Sunday when people are more likely to have time to shop.

Regardless, though, this lawsuit is really about the lingering grip of archaic laws masquerading as community values. Blue Laws were imposed at a time when religion could dictate civic life. They weren’t about giving people a chance to rest on the Sabbath but rather about pressuring people to go to church by shutting down alternatives. Even if people justify Bergen County’s policies by pointing to decreased traffic, that comes with trade-offs. Forcing stores to close on Sundays deprives workers from making money, prevents the businesses from selling to more customers, and makes it harder for people who work during the week to buy what they need when they have the time to go shopping. (It’s not like the traffic disappears either. It just shifts somewhere else on Sundays or increases it on Saturdays.)

By desperately clinging to these ancient rules (which haven’t been voted on in over 30 years), Paramus officials aren’t really defending peace and tranquility. They’re weaponizing the rules to punish a place people actually want to visit. These Blue Laws don’t preserve a tradition worth saving; they expose how pointless it is to base public policy on religious beliefs or nostalgic fantasies.

If American Dream mall wins this battle, other businesses in the county won’t be forced to open on Sundays if they don’t want to. They can stay closed and keep the roads quiet all they want. But at least they’ll have the choice. And if Paramus wins, it may be much harder to sell merch at MetLife Stadium during football games, which would create a whole new set of problems.

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