Open on Sunday? 84% of major Utah stores do business on the Sabbath

Fifty years ago, almost every major shop and store in Utah was closed on Sundays, according to an old, yellowing study by the Utah Council of Retailers.

Times have changed radically. But they have changed less in Utah County than in other parts of the state.

About half of the major stores in Utah County now open on Sundays, a significant increase from 50 years ago. But elsewhere in the state, nine of every 10 stores now open on Sundays — a monumental increase.

Those findings emerge from Deseret Morning News research of 2,476 retail stores statewide, including nearly all grocery and convenience stores in the state plus larger retailers, chain stores and businesses in the state's major shopping malls.

It suggests that to a majority of Utahns, the Ten Commandments may have shrunken to just the Nine Commandments — with many discounting Jehovah's biblical command to Moses to, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy," or at least interpreting it to mean that Sunday shopping is OK.

In fact, a new Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV poll by Dan Jones & Associates found that two of every three Utahns report shopping on a Sunday sometime during the past year, with more than a third of Utahns saying they shop frequently or very often on Sundays. (Also, two of every five main breadwinners report they had to work on Sundays sometimes.)

Only 6 percent of Utahns surveyed say they will never shop on Sundays, while 87 percent said they will shop under varying circumstances. And nearly a third of all Utahns say they would shop on Sunday as they would on any other day of the week — and do not do it just to meet pressing needs.

It was not always that way.

All were closed

A study written in 1962 by the Utah Council of Retailers, designed to help legislators examine a then-proposed Sunday closing law, describes what business on Sundays was like in Utah during different eras.

It noted that during pioneer days, the territorial Legislature did not bother to pass Sunday closing laws "since practically all businesses were closed on Sunday anyway."

But two years after statehood, in 1898, the Legislature passed a law forcing most businesses to close on Sunday — or face a now-quaint fine of at least $5 and up to $100. (That law exempted several types of businesses, including hotels, restaurants, gas stations, livery stables, drug stores, theaters and bathing resorts.)

That law remained on the books until 1943, when it was successfully challenged by a Carbon County fruit market. The Utah Supreme Court ruled the law was too arbitrary because it allowed some businesses (such as resorts or gas stations) to sell the same types of commodities (such as fruit) that forced-to-close markets could not sell that day.

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