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SCOTUS loves to busy itself with absurd outliers, I'll grant you that.

Suppose you are a Justice.

Suppose I am the attorney representing a jurisdiction that bans Sunday sales.

Suppose I asserted that banning sales one day a week serves the secular societal purpose of causing the drunks who are unable to plan ahead and buy in advance on Saturday (ie, the worst ones) to dry out and either see the error of their ways or to seek the help that they clearly need due to symptoms withdrawal.

To simplify things, I'll concede that the secular societal purpose outlined above is more-or-less a ruse to justify the law if you'll concede that it IS at least a potential rational purpose for the law.

How would you, Justice @betarhoalphadelta distinguish between a rational purpose being used as a ruse and a rational purpose that is ACTUALLY the reason for the law?

It's a good question, and I'm not a lawyer or a SCOTUS justice. 

I'd probably look at a lot of things.

I'd probably ask the attorney why it is on Sunday, i.e. why not Saturday, or Friday, or Tuesday? If you're that hardcore of a drunk, not being able to buy on Tuesday is just as impactful as not being able to buy on Tuesday. But it's less of a PITA for someone running a Sunday backyard BBQ or someone who ran out of beer at the Super Bowl party. 

I'd probably look at the statements of the legislators that sponsored the law to see what statements were made by them around the time that it was passed. It's difficult to determine intent in a legal sense, even when we all know what the real intent was. But sometimes if they say it out loud, you can identify that it was more about religion than public purpose. 

And ultimately whether I would find it unconstitutional is unclear. As a non-lawyer and non-SCOTUS justice I think it's utter BS, but the law can often be tricky on these sorts of things.
 

SCOTUS loves to busy itself with absurd outliers, I'll grant you that.

Do you have an example?  This strikes me as another over generalization.

Some interesting reading and good dialogue.  

I will always wonder why SOME people get so triggered over those who have faith.  

me too

I just don't see how someone's religious beliefs cause much of a problem in my life.
Even elected officials

If the elected officials make it illegal to buy beer on Sunday, it's a minor inconvenience.
Nothing more.

Even if I own a business that sells beer.
It's a known issue that a business man has to account for.

Many other silly laws and regulations on the books that aren't related much to religion.

It's a good question, and I'm not a lawyer or a SCOTUS justice.

I'd probably look at a lot of things.

I'd probably ask the attorney why it is on Sunday, i.e. why not Saturday, or Friday, or Tuesday? If you're that hardcore of a drunk, not being able to buy on Tuesday is just as impactful as not being able to buy on Tuesday. But it's less of a PITA for someone running a Sunday backyard BBQ or someone who ran out of beer at the Super Bowl party.

I'd probably look at the statements of the legislators that sponsored the law to see what statements were made by them around the time that it was passed. It's difficult to determine intent in a legal sense, even when we all know what the real intent was. But sometimes if they say it out loud, you can identify that it was more about religion than public purpose.

And ultimately whether I would find it unconstitutional is unclear. As a non-lawyer and non-SCOTUS justice I think it's utter BS, but the law can often be tricky on these sorts of things.

The law can be very tricky and I think that one reason that laws preventing the sale of liquor on Sundays have survived is that I think it would be tricky to craft a rationale that invalidated those laws without also invalidating a lot of other laws.  

My example was that a finding that Sunday laws are invalid because they have "some religious justification" would also invalidate laws against Murder because those also have "some religious justification" so that is obviously a no-go.  

Statements made by legislators are tricky because you are effectively trying to get into a legislator's head.  Actually it is worse than that because the law probably wouldn't be invalid unless you could get into a majority of the legislator's heads.  Ie, Ohio's HoR has 99 Reps and Ohio's Senate has 33 Senators.  Even if a handfull of Reps and a smaller handfull of Senators made statements UNEQUIVOCALLY indicating that they supported a specific piece of legislation because of the religious implications that wouldn't necessarily invalidate it unless that handfull grew to 50 Reps and/or 17 Senators.  

A SCOTUS ruling that laws were only invalid under the Establishment Clause if there was no non-religious justification would permit more-or-less anything because crafty lawyers could almost always come up with some secular justification for just about anything.  

I'm having trouble coming up with an articulable rationale that would knock out Sunday Laws without having unwanted side effects like knocking out 2am laws or (the extreme) knocking out murder laws and basically everything else.  

When you say that "we all know", I agree but obviously SCOTUS can't just say "We all know" because that isn't an articulable precedent that can be applied to future cases.  

If the elected officials make it illegal to buy beer on Sunday, it's a minor inconvenience.
Nothing more.

Even if I own a business that sells beer.
It's a known issue that a business man has to account for.

The funny(?) thing is that liquor store owners in Georgia (using as an example as I lived there once and followed the politics) actually were fine with the ban on Sunday sales. It gave them a day off, and because all of their competitors were ALSO forced to have a day off, didn't materially affect their bottom lines. Customers would stock up on Saturday and then they'd be off. 

Yeah, there were a tiny number of people near the border who would cross to buy on Sunday in neighboring states that allowed it, but not THAT many. 

It created a prisoner's dilemma scenario. As long as all of them were forced not to sell on Sunday, there was no competitive disadvantage to closing on Sunday. But the minute that Sunday sales were legalized, they ALL needed to be open Sunday or else the competition would get those Sunday sales. 

A little of the Baptist & bootlegger scenario going on there IMHO.