BREAKING NEWS: Heritage Foundation Report Calls for ‘Uniform’ Sunday Laws

On January 8, 2026, the Heritage Foundation released “Saving America by Saving the Family,” a comprehensive policy agenda authored by Roger Severino, Jay W. Richards, and others. Framed as a “culture-wide Manhattan Project” (Page 6), the report aims to avert a demographic collapse before the nation’s 250th anniversary. Among its most controversial proposals is a call for the restoration of “blue laws” to establish a “uniform day of rest” on Sundays. Relying on the 1961 Supreme Court case McGowan v. Maryland, the authors argue that a synchronized community pause is necessary to combat “spiritual homelessness” (Page 38). This proposal explicitly prioritizes “uniformity” (Page 38) over flexibility, creating a potential legal conflict for Jewish and Seventh-day Adventist communities who observe a Saturday Sabbath.

The following analysis focuses on what is within the text of the original paper itself and does not draw from external information. There will be additional analysis in the near future about the subject, but to be fair to the authors of the paper, this is intended to be reviewed in the context in which the Heritage Foundation issued the proposal.

Here is the link to the document. Pages cited below refer to pages within the document. https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2026-01/SR323.pdf

Yes, the Heritage Foundation’s January 2026 report explicitly proposes that states and local communities restore “blue laws” to limit commercial activity on Sundays. The authors argue that a “uniform day of rest” (Page 38) is constitutionally valid and socially necessary to restore family life. While the report praises the family structures of minority faiths like Orthodox Jews, its specific policy recommendation relies on legal precedent that permits the state to designate Sunday as the common day of rest because “the majority of people who take a day of rest for religious reasons do so on Sundays” (Page 38).