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.

After that, Salt Lake City adopted its own, separate Sunday closing law in 1946. But the Utah Supreme Court struck it down in 1948, also for being too arbitrary.

Even with no law banning Sunday openings, the 1962 retailers' report still said, "Only scattered facilities were open prior to 1959."

For example, a 1953 Deseret News story reported that 150 out of 910 "small grocers" (16 percent) in the state were open on Sundays that year when then-Gov. J. Bracken Lee vetoed a mandatory Sunday closing bill. Virtually all larger supermarkets were still closed on Sundays then.

Change begins

The old retailers' report says that Sunday openings began to skyrocket after 1959, when then-Gov. George D. Clyde, like Gov. Lee before him, also vetoed a mandatory Sunday closing law, calling it an unwise intrusion on personal liberty.

"This seemed to be a green light to retailers to go ahead with Sunday selling," the 1962 report said. It added about the situation in late 1962, "Today over half of Utah's grocery stores are open on Sunday; all of the drug-department (super drug) stores; practically all corner drug stores; about 80 percent of the gasoline service stations; the large discount stores, and numerous other stores in various retail groups."

Many legislators in the '60s found such growth in Sunday openings alarming, and news reports said proposed Sunday closing laws were debated repeatedly for years.

The Legislature passed a Sunday closing bill in 1967, but then-Gov. Calvin L. Rampton vetoed it. It passed another in 1970, which Rampton allowed to become law without his signature. But 3rd District Judge Leonard W. Elton ruled it unconstitutional in an oral announcement. He died the next day without having signed his orders.

The Utah Supreme Court later upheld Elton's ruling that the Sunday closing law was unconstitutional. No other statewide Sunday closing bill has ever again become law in Utah, even though a 1961 U.S. Supreme Court decision allows "secular" mandatory day-of-rest closing laws.

Currently, the only institutions now mandated by state law to close on Sundays are state liquor stores, courts and depository institutions.

Situation now

If legislators in the '60s thought too many businesses were open on Sundays — when half of grocery stores did business — they had not seen anything yet.

The Deseret Morning News found that 84 percent of the 2,476 major stores it contacted statewide are now open on Sundays.