KANSAS CITY, KAN. ? Liquor stores in Wyandotte County can continue to sell their alcoholic wares seven days a week after a judge ruled Tuesday the county can legally opt out of the state’s ban on Sunday liquor sales.

“It has no purpose,” said Hal Walker, chief council for the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kan. “It doesn’t serve the state’s interest, or the citizens’. We are very pleased with the decision.”

The Unified Government, along with the city of Edwardsville, decided to test their right to opt out of the ban last fall, arguing residents were taking their business and tax dollars to neighboring Missouri.

The two localities argued the state’s Liquor Control Act does not apply uniformly to all cities. The state’s home-rule amendment to the constitution, they said, permits exemptions from nonuniform acts.

After voters in Kansas City, Kan., approved an ordinance that lifted the ban and a similar measure took effect in Edwardsville, then-Atty. Gen. Carla Stovall sued and asked a court to clarify the law and the exemption rules.

In his ruling issued Tuesday, Wyandotte County District Judge John J. Bukaty Jr. wrote “the court must conclude that the defendants had the authority under the home rule amendment of the Kansas constitution to charter out from under the statutory ban on Sunday sales of alcohol and allow such sales in their respective jurisdictions.”

Officials for both localities expect Atty. Gen. Phill Kline to appeal the ruling. Bill Hoyt, a spokesman for Kline, said the office would review the judge’s decision when Kline returns from a trip to Washington, D.C., later this week.

Kline’s office had conceded certain provisions of the control act did not apply to all cities, but said this was not the type of legislation from which the home-rule amendment was intended to allow cities to exempt themselves.

Liquor store owner Merrill Wright praised the judge’s ruling. His store, Wright Liquor in Kansas City, Kan., has only closed one Sunday since the election results were certified. The state had agreed not to prosecute liquor stores until May 5, 2003, or until a decision was issued in the attorney general’s lawsuit.

“It’s like adding an extra Saturday a week for me,” Wright said. And for his customers, “it saved them a lot of driving and breaking the law by bringing liquor across the (state) line.”

Doug Spangler, the Edwardsville city administrator, said the Legislature now needs to examine the Liquor Control Act and allow individual communities to decide whether to permit Sunday alcohol sales.

“Hopefully,” he said, “everyone will take this opportunity to fix the problems.”

But Republican legislative leaders said bills to permit Sunday sales of liquor have failed to pass. House Speaker Doug Mays, R-Topeka, said he is worried about the effect of cities and counties exempting themselves from the Sunday ban, as well as other parts of the state’s liquor laws.

“If we get a hodgepodge of laws across the counties, then it’s going to be a mess,” Mays said.