Groups push to allow Sunday alcohol sales
More than 10,000 supporters have signed a petition seeking to change Indiana’s “blue laws,” which keep stores from selling alcohol on Sundays.
Indiana is one of 15 states where prohibition-era blue laws are still in place. Those laws allow bars and restaurants to sell alcohol, but ban carryout sales.
National momentum is building to overturn those bans, though. Since 2002, 13 states have repealed blue laws.
Hoosiers for Beverage Choices, a citizen group organized with the support of the Indiana Retail Council, the Indiana Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association and the Indiana Petroleum Council, is backing the petition.
“The retail community have been fighting for decades to repeal these laws,” said Grant Monahan, president of the Indiana Retail Council and spokesperson for Hoosiers for Beverage Choices. “It’s time to move on from these outdated policies and finally give the consumer the choice to purchase alcohol when they want.”
Although the movement to repeal the laws will benefit consumers and drug, grocery and convenient stores, liquor stores say they will suffer as a result of the repeal because they’ll have to pay staff members to work an extra day.
“It wouldn’t be possible for us [to stay open],” Chris Johnson, general manager of Muncie Liquors Inc., told the Ball State Daily News. “Grocery stores and gas stations don’t have a problem with this because they are already staffed and open.”
Johnson said the money required to stay open Sunday would exceed the profit he would make by being open an extra day. He also said repealing the laws would hurt all Indiana liquor stores, which are mostly small, privately owned businesses.
Monahan said liquor store owners have combated the efforts by the retail community to repeal the laws over the years because they don’t like competitiveness in the market. Monahan also said Indiana is losing money by keeping the blue laws in place.
“Sunday is the second-busiest shopping day of the week,” he said. “Indiana is losing somewhere in the ballpark of $8 million in yearly tax revenue as a result of these laws.”
Monahan said the organization will begin to talk with members of the Indiana General Assembly about repealing the blue laws.
Brad Gideon, director of Legal Studies and instructor of political science at Ball State, said he thought Hoosiers for Beverage Choices will be successful in its efforts because of the coalitions supporting it.
“In the past it was easy for opposing groups to write them off as a rag-tag group of young people that just wanted to get drunk,” Gideon said. “The public seems to be on the side of repealing the law, and now that there are major retailers and lobbyists involved, the issue will be taken seriously.”
The Ball State Daily News contributed to this report.
