Sunday Closing Laws .--The history of Sunday Closing Laws goes back into United States colonial history and far back into English history. 144 Commonly, the laws require the observance of the Christian Sabbath as a day of rest, although in recent years they have tended to become honeycombed with exceptions. The Supreme Court rejected an Establishment Clause challenge to Sunday Closing Laws in McGowan v. Maryland. 145 The Court acknowledged that historically the laws had a religious motivation and were designed to effectuate concepts of Christian theology. However, ''[i]n light of the evolution of our Sunday Closing Laws through the centuries, and of their more or less recent emphasis upon secular considerations, it is not difficult to discern that as presently written and administered, most of them, at least, are of a secular rather than of a religious character, and that presently they bear no relationship to establishment of religion. . . .'' 146 ''[T]he fact that this [prescribed day of rest] is Sunday, a day of particular significance for the dominant Christian sects, does not bar the State from achieving its secular goals. To say that the States 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.'' 147 The choice of Sunday as the day of rest, while originally religious, now reflected simple legislative inertia or recognition that Sunday was a traditional day for the choice. 148 Valid secular reasons existed for not simply requiring one day of rest and leaving to each individual to choose the day, reasons of ease of enforcement and of assuring a common day in the community for rest and leisure. 149 More recently, a state statute mandating that employers honor the Sabbath day of the employee's choice was held invalid as having the primary effect of promoting religion by weighing the employee's Sabbath choice over all other interests. 150 Source

Appellants are members of the Orthodox Jewish Faith, which requires the closing of their places of business and total abstention from all manner of work from nightfall each Friday until nightfall each Saturday. As merchants engaged in the retail sale of clothing and home furnishings in Philadelphia, they sued to enjoin enforcement of a 1959 Pennsylvania criminal statute which forbade the retail sale on Sundays of those commodities and other specified commodities. They claimed that the statute violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and constituted a law respecting an establishment of religion and that it interfered with the free exercise of their religion by imposing serious economic disadvantages upon them, if they adhere to the observance of their Sabbath, and that it would operate so as to hinder the Orthodox Jewish Faith in gaining new members. Held: The statute does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment nor constitute a law respecting an establishment of religion. Two Guys from Harrison-Allentown, Inc., v. McGinley, ante, p. 582; and it does not prohibit the free exercise of appellants' religion, within the meaning of the First Amendment, made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 600-610. - See more at: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/366/599.html#sthash.bMX88PJA.dpuf

May 12,2014 French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said "“We have 500 days to avoid climate chaos,”

That takes us to Sept. 24, 2015