It's a question that pops up each time the state legislature gets ready to convene: Will this be the year Sunday liquor sales are finally legalized in Minnesota?

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And, sure enough, with legislators set to return to St. Paul January 3rd, that question is once again at hand. Only this year, though, the new Republican majority in the state assembly and senate might finally be able to pass a law that legalizes Sunday liquor sales.

That's according to THIS TwinCities.com report, anyway. House Speaker Kurt Daudt, who's a proponent of allowing liquor stores to be open Sundays, said in the story, "I think it’s just past time," Daudt said. “If a liquor store doesn’t want to be open on Sunday, it doesn’t have to. Customers, consumers, our constituents would like them to have that flexibility and frankly would want them open.”

Having moved to Minnesota five years ago from Wisconsin -- where buying liquor on Sunday isn't only legal, it's practically encouraged -- I don't quite get why this law is still on the books.

I've read that some liquor stores fear repealing the Sunday liquor ban would cost them money by essentially forcing them to be open on Sundays, which then wouldn't generate enough sales to offset the cost of being open. Not that I know much about it, but it seems to me that if the law were repealed, and you felt you'd lose money by being open on Sunday, then it seems pretty simple: don't be open on Sundays-- the state wouldn't force you to be open.

But if there WERE liquor stores that wanted to open on Sundays (particularly ones near the Wisconsin and Iowa borders, where liquor sales are allowed), I don't see why the state is telling them they can't.

What do you think?

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