Is This Our Last Daylight Savings Time?
Soon the time will come again when our clocks “turn back” – November. 6 is the date we will stop daylight saving time in 2022 and return to standard time. But then, most likely, in the spring we will have to change the clock again. So what happened to these bills in Congress to abolish time zones?
We are not getting a nationwide time change ban (yet)
The Sunshine Protection Act is a federal bill that will make daylight savings time permanent. If passed, it will come into effect on November 5, 2023, when we would have moved our clocks otherwise. (To be clear, this will be next year, not next week.) As a result, our winter mornings will remain dark for an hour longer than now, but we will have an hour more daylight on winter evenings.
The bill was passed by the Senate in March 2022 but failed by the House of Representatives. To become law, it must pass through the House of Representatives and then be signed by the president. Neither is likely to happen anytime soon. The Hill reported that people generally like the idea of abolishing clock changes, but that there was no consensus in the House of Representatives on whether daytime or standard time should become constant, and that passing the bill did not seem to make sense. be a priority for legislators. The bill is likely not going anywhere , at least not anytime soon.
What about state legislatures?
The states have their own ideas about what time should be. Currently, two states operate on standard time all year round. If a sun protection law is passed, these states (Hawaii and Arizona, excluding the Navajo Nation) will be allowed to keep their standard time.
Nineteen other states have passed laws or regulations that say they will switch to permanent daylight saving time if the federal government ever allows them to do so. These states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, include Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. . California voters have approved a law that has yet to be formally registered.
However, until a federal law is passed, these states are stuck in their current time zones. The current federal law, passed in 1966 , allows states to opt out of daylight saving time (as in Hawaii and Arizona), but does not give states the ability to make daylight saving time permanent or choose their own dates for clock changes. However, if you’re tired of changing the time, you can always move to one of the non-DST areas, including the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.