On Sunday at 2 a.m., Americans and others around the globe will once again “spring” clocks forward to observe daylight saving time. The debate over the biannual clock change endures in state legislatures as policymakers continue to introduce legislation seeking to eliminate daylight time or make it permanent.
Over 750 bills and resolutions have been considered over the past seven years, and this year, at least 32 states considered or are considering 69 bills or resolutions related to daylight time. There are a roughly equal number of bills advocating either permanent standard time or year-round daylight time.
Implementing permanent standard time is allowed by current federal law, while enacting year-round DST is not. Arizona (except for Navajo Nation) and Hawaii have opted to stay on standard time year-round and not observe DST. In addition, the territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands do not observe daylight time.
One notable development this year was in North Dakota, where the House passed a measure (HB1259), 55-37, that would permanently adopt standard time by exempting the state from daylight saving time, as allowed by the federal Uniform Time Act of 1966. As of Monday, the bill was pending in the Senate State and Local Government Committee. Rep. Desiree Morton (R) says testimony supporting the bill cited widely reported adverse health effects of changing clocks twice a year. “These changes can take several weeks to adjust to and often put parents and kids into a sleep debt, causing mental and physical fatigue, especially the parents,” Morton told the North Dakota Monitor.
Rep. Dan Ruby (R), one of the bill’s sponsors, says that North Dakota’s Canadian neighbor to the north, Saskatchewan, observes standard time year-round, allowing for more early morning daylight and making construction work safer for those starting early to avoid the summer heat. Legislators voting against the bill favored the extra hour of evening daylight DST offers.
Eighteen states have enacted legislation to provide for year-round daylight time in the last seven years. However, these bills will take effect only if Congress were to allow such a change and, in some cases, if surrounding states enact the same legislation. States cannot unilaterally change time zones or alter the length of daylight time, which begins and ends on statutorily mandated dates. Thus, Congress must act before states can implement year-round daylight time. Pending in Congress is HR 139, the Sunshine Protection Act of 2025, which would make daylight time the new, permanent standard time.
The states that have enacted legislation to authorize year-round daylight saving time include Oklahoma (2024); Colorado (2022); Alabama, Georgia, Minnesota, Mississippi and Montana (2021); Idaho (Pacific time zone only), Louisiana; South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming (2020); Delaware, Maine, Oregon (Pacific time zone only), Tennessee and Washington (2019); and Florida (2018). Resolutions passed in Kentucky (2022) and Ohio (2020) in prior years have been removed from the NCSL count. California voters approved Proposition 7 in 2018, requiring a two-thirds vote by the Legislature to either enact year-round DST or permanent standard time, but no legislative action has occurred since.
Interestingly, legislation backing both year-round daylight time and standard time has been introduced in eight states this year: Alaska, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. In both houses of the Texas Legislature, a constitutional amendment is pending to authorize a statewide referendum allowing voters to choose between year-round standard time or year-round daylight time.
So, as the national debate persists, and state-specific initiatives are deliberated into 2025, clock changing remains the law of the land in all but a few places.
Visit the NCSL Daylight Saving Time page for more on state legislative time change actions, including a list of bills introduced over the last six years. For more on the history of time zones and daylight saving time, visit the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Another good resource for bill tracking on time zone issues is sponsored by Save Standard Time.
Jim Reed directs NCSL’s Environment, Energy and Transportation Program.