AN UNJUST DECISION by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Mar 21, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 12.

AN UNJUST DECISION.

By Editor

A DESPATCH in the Toledo Blade from St. Paul, Minnesota, dated January 13, states that an opinion of the municipal court of Minneapolis was upheld by the Supreme Court of Minnesota holding "that the Sunday-closing law is equally applicable to Jew and Gentile." M. A. Weiss, a Jew, was convicted of selling groceries on Sunday contrary to the Sunday-closing law. He asserted that "the law is unconstitutional, being prejudicial against the Hebraic religion."

Now we do not call this an unjust decision because of its lack of discrimination, for if the law is a good law it certainly ought to apply to all alike. The unrighteousness of the decision is that the law should apply to any one at all. Man has absolutely no right to prescribe laws regulating religion. Whenever any law of the kind is passed at all, it invariably becomes class legislation, for there is no religious institution whatsoever which is the same to all. The Minnesota Supreme Court held that the "Sunday law is justified as a sanitary measure and as a legitimate exercise of police power." Indeed! but if this be the case, then the police have a right to regulate all things sanitary. It is good for a man that he rest so many hours, therefore a law regulating hours of sleep. It is good for a man that he eat certain foods and abstain from certain others, therefore a law regulating eating. It is good for a man that he take a proper amount of exercise, and wear certain kinds of clothing, and ventilate his house in a proper way, therefore laws prescribing all these. The strange thing is that these judicial men can not see the utter absurdity of endeavoring to defend a Sunday law from the view-point of a sanitary measure. The very term itself is only a verbal donkey blanket to cover the religious tiger which crouches beneath. Sunday laws are religious, pure and simple.