McGowan v. Maryland

McGowan v. Maryland
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 8, 1960 Decided May 29, 1961
Full case name	Margaret M. McGowan, et al. v. State of Maryland
Citations	366 U.S. 420 (more) 6 L. Ed.2d 393, 81 S. Ct. 1101 (1961)
Prior history	Conviction upheld, Margaret M. McGowan v. State of Maryland, 220 Md. 117, 151 A.2d 156 (1959)
Holding
Laws proscribing or limiting Sunday trading are not necessarily unconstitutional.
Court membership
Chief Justice Earl Warren Associate Justices Hugo Black · Felix Frankfurter William O. Douglas · Tom C. Clark John M. Harlan II · William J. Brennan, Jr. Charles E. Whittaker · Potter Stewart
Case opinions
Majority	Warren
Concurrence	Frankfurter, Harlan
Dissent	Douglas
Laws applied
Md. Ann. Code, Art. 27, § 521; 1st and 14th Amendments

McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420 (1961),^[1] was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that laws with religious origins are not unconstitutional if they have secular purpose.

Background

The Court rejected an establishment clause challenge to laws requiring that most large-scale commercial enterprises remain closed on Sundays. The Court's review of the history demonstrated that Sunday closing laws were originally efforts to promote church attendance. "But, despite the strongly religious origin of these laws, non religious arguments for Sunday closing began to be heard more distinctly."

The Court said that the Constitution does not ban federal or state regulation of conduct whose reason or effect merely happens to coincide with the tenets of some or all religions. It concluded that, as presently written and administered, most Sunday closing laws are of a secular rather than religious character. They provide a uniform day of rest for all citizens. To say that the State cannot prescribe Sunday as a day of rest for these purposes solely because centuries ago such laws had their genesis in religion would give a constitutional interpretation of hostility to the public welfare rather than one of mere separation of church and state.

Constitutional text

The relevant clauses of the 1st and 14th Amendments to the United States Constitution:

The 1st Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Section 1 of the 14th Amendment

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The court's decision

The Court held that Maryland's laws did not violate the First Amendment. The plaintiffs claimed only economic injury, not that they had been prevented from the free exercise of their religion. Writing for the Court, Chief Justice Warren concluded:

[The] appellants allege only economic injury to themselves; they do not allege any infringement of their own religious freedoms due to Sunday closing. In fact, the record is silent as to what appellants' religious beliefs are. Since the general rule is that "a litigant may only assert his own constitutional rights or immunities," (United States v. Raines, 362 U.S. 17, 22) we hold that appellants have no standing to raise this contention.

The Court also held that the law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief Justice Warren again:

...the Court has [previously] held that the Fourteenth Amendment permits the States a wide scope of discretion in enacting laws which affect some groups of citizens differently than others. The constitutional safeguard is offended only if the classification rests on grounds wholly irrelevant to the achievement of the State's objective. State legislatures are presumed to have acted within their constitutional power [even when], in practice, their laws result in some inequality.

In reaching their conclusion, the Court also examined the wider question of whether laws proscribing or limiting Sunday trading were constitutional. They held that such laws did not violate the division between church and state, because - no matter the historical roots of such laws - the laws existed as constituted in order to fulfill a secular objective. In other words, even if Sunday trading laws were originally intended to facilitate and encourage church attendance in the colonial United States, the laws as presently constituted were intended to improve the "health, safety, recreation, and general well-being" of citizens. The present purpose of the laws is to provide a uniform day of rest for all; the fact that this day is of particular significance for one or more religions does not bar the State from achieving its secular goals in this manner.

References

1. ^ 366 U.S. 420 (Full text of the decision courtesy of Findlaw.com)

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 366