Auto sales are illegal on Sundays in Michigan’s largest counties.

It’s been this way since 1953, when a law was enacted to ban Sunday car sales. News reports from the time show the law was not pushed by religious Michiganders trying to impose their views on others but rather by car dealers who wanted the day off.

Act 66 passed with immediate effect and was enacted on May 12, 1953.

Read it for yourself: Act 66 of 1953

A May 13, 1953, story in The Detroit News, published the day after Act 66 was passed, presents the law as a gift to auto sellers, whose competitors were open on Sundays.

“The large majority of Detroit’s new and used car dealers were elated Tuesday when it was announced that Gov. (Mennen) Williams had signed a bill banning Sunday auto sales in Michigan’s most populous counties,” the story reads. “New and used car sales had been banned in Detroit for the last year and a half, and this has caused a few of the dealers to set up establishments on the outskirts of the city.”

As written, the 1953 law only applied to eight counties, those above 130,000 in population as of the latest U.S. Census. Today, 71 years later, the law applies in 17 counties:

• Berrien
• Calhoun
• Genesee
• Ingham
• Jackson
• Kalamazoo
• Kent
• Livingston
• Macomb
• Monroe
• Muskegon
• Oakland
• Ottawa
• Saginaw
• St. Clair
• Washtenaw
• Wayne

A Detroit charter school won $500,000 in a national competition designed to reward transformational changes in education.

The Detroit Achievement Academy was one of 33 semifinalists for the Yass Prize, as previously reported by CapCon.

Organizers of the prize announced Dec. 14 that the academy was one of nine finalists, receiving a $500,000 prize.

“We know giving education innovators the opportunity to work outside the system that is suffocating so many of them is the most effective way to transform the lives of America’s students,” Janine Yass said in a statement announcing the award.

Kyle Smitley, CEO of Detroit Achievement Academy, described the cash prize and the recognition as a “bright new beginning” for the academy and for Detroit Prep, which was also under consideration for the prize.

Smitley is the founder of both schools. Together, they serve about 800 students.

“I am constantly communicating with my fellow finalists and with alumni from past years, and it feels like our win was by no means the end of something, or the sort of capstone that I thought it would be, but rather just a really bright new beginning to a really exciting next chapter for our two special schools,” Smitley said.