Bergen County blue laws 2026: repeal, American Dream explained

I want to be upfront about something. I have never lived in Bergen County. I grew up in Atlantic County. I have spent most of my adult life in working Mercer County. The Bergen County blue laws have never personally prevented me from buying a shirt or a couch on a Sunday.

But I cannot get a Chick-fil-A on Sunday anywhere in America, and somehow that still bothers me. So I understand the frustration.

Bergen County is the last county in New Jersey — and one of the last places in the entire country — still enforcing blue laws that ban the sale of most nonessential items on Sundays. Clothing. Furniture. Appliances. Cars. The laws date to 1704. They were codified in 1798 under something actually called the "Act to Suppress Vice and Immorality." In 1798, not being able to buy a toaster on Sunday was apparently a matter of public morality.

It is 2026. The toaster would like a word.

How Bergen County got here — and stayed

The story of how Bergen County ended up as the lone holdout is genuinely interesting. When New Jersey gave counties the option to repeal or keep their blue laws in 1959, every county eventually opted out. Every one except Bergen. Twice — in 1980 and again in 1993 — Bergen County residents voted to keep the laws. The 1993 vote wasn't even close: 2-to-1 in favor of keeping them.

The argument for keeping them has always been essentially this: Sunday is the one day Paramus doesn't turn into a parking lot. Garden State Plaza, Paramus Park, the Bergen Town Center — Bergen County has some of the highest-revenue malls in the country. The blue laws give residents one day a week when they can drive through their own town. That is not nothing. There is a real quality-of-life case to be made.

But that case gets harder to make every year. And American Dream just made it nearly impossible.

The mall that broke the dam

For more than a year, American Dream in East Rutherford has been openly operating its retail stores on Sundays — in direct defiance of Bergen County's blue laws. The mall's position is that it sits on land owned by the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, which is state property, and therefore county law does not apply.

Bergen County says that is wrong. Paramus sued. The lawsuit is still working its way through the courts in 2026. In the meantime, shoppers have been walking into American Dream on Sundays buying things that technically cannot be sold in Bergen County on Sundays, while five minutes away the Garden State Plaza cordons off its clothing sections with caution tape on the same day.

That is not a sustainable situation. You cannot have a mega-mall openly flouting a law while the small businesses down the road follow it faithfully and lose customers because of it. The Paramus mayor called it an unfair advantage for American Dream's tenants — and he is right. The playing field stopped being level the moment American Dream decided the rules did not apply to them.

The practical argument wins

Here is where I land. The sentiment behind the blue laws — the idea that one day a week should feel different, quieter, less commercial — is something I actually respect. There is something worth protecting about a Sunday that does not feel exactly like a Saturday.

But the world has changed in ways that make the laws increasingly difficult to defend. Working families in 2026 often have exactly two days off. Saturday and Sunday. That is it. If Sunday retail is closed, they lose half their shopping window to a law that traces its roots to Puritan theology. Meanwhile, everything they need is available online seven days a week, 24 hours a day. The blue laws do not make Sunday quieter anymore. They just make Bergen County less competitive.

Online shopping did not take a day off. Bergen County's small businesses cannot afford to either.

The path forward

There is no shortage of Bergen County residents who agree. Grassroots campaigns to repeal the laws have existed for years — on social media, in petitions, in letters to legislators. Governor Chris Christie tried to repeal them in his 2010 budget and got shot down. The path to repeal runs through either a new ballot referendum — the last one was 1993 — or action by the state legislature, which has historically avoided touching this issue.

What is different now is American Dream. The mall has done what no referendum or petition ever managed to do: it forced the conversation into active litigation and made the inconsistency impossible to ignore. If the courts rule that American Dream is exempt because it sits on state land, the blue laws effectively become unenforceable for any sufficiently large development — and the whole framework collapses anyway.

Repeal the laws. Give every business the choice and the opportunity. Stop worrying about suppressing vice and immorality — that ship sailed in 1798.

If you live in Bergen County and agree, your freeholder and your state legislators need to hear from you. The last referendum was 1993. A lot has changed in thirty-three years.

Even Chick-fil-A makes a choice on Sundays. Bergen County's businesses deserve the same one.