CompuServe Thread

I KNOW it won't hold up on challenge for very long; the Supreme Court struck down blue laws over a decade ago and the last I checked the Supreme Court covered Puerto Rico as well (they just struck down an anti-abortion law in Guam, after all). I suspect it is more labor pressure than law. I remember when I was in Brisbane in 1985 the merchants at Surfer's Paradise, an ocean resort that resembles every ocean resort in the world, were complaining that they were a tourist area and should be allowed to stay open at night since they were losing a ton of business–people swam and played in the day and bought at night. The labor unions were opposed, and in this they were joined by the merchants of Brisbane about 30 miles away who said that if Surfer's Paradise stores could remain open nights then they would lose a ton of business as everybody would go to SP to shop! The ban stayed. I do understand, though, that, very recently, there's been some movement towards late night shopping on limited scales as market pressure gets to them. 7-11, the convenience store chain, was the first to really hit at the law. There was an exception called the "Pensioners Exception" which allowed very small shops to remain open since these were run by Mom and Pop and tended to be supplemental retirement income. The law said you could have no more than 2 employees on to meet this exception. Of course, that's all that are usually in a 7-11, so they opened hundreds of them all over Australia and remained open 24 hours. They so cut into the supermarket business that markets pleaded to have late nights, many got them, and that was the crack in the armor.