Hate March's 'Spring Forward'? There's Some Promising News

If you hate losing an hour of sleep each spring owing to daylight saving time, we have good and bad news. The bad news is that most Americans will still have to move clocks forward one hour at 2am Sunday. The good news is that "momentum for ending the time change is stronger now than ever before," one "time activist" tells USA Today. Fifteen states—Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming—have enacted legislation to make daylight saving time a permanent practice, rather than one observed only from March to November. That would mean no more switching of the clocks twice a year, which messes with our circadian rhythms and reportedly leads to an increase in fatal auto accidents. Yet none of the aforementioned states can have their way without federal intervention.

Under the Uniform Time Act of 1966, states have two options: to switch to DST on a particular day or stick with standard time—usually observed from November to March—throughout the year, as is done in Arizona (with the exception of the Navajo Nation, following a decades-old federal exemption, per KNXV), Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. Georgia could soon join that group as a bill requiring year-round standard time has passed the state Senate in the absence of a federal amendment. But Florida Sen. Marco Rubio hopes that amendment will come soon. He's reintroduced the Sunshine Protection Act of 2019, which would allow for year-round daylight saving time across the country, per WTSP. However, it and the similar Daylight Act have "stalled in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce," per USA Today. (Sleep experts say the switch to DST is bad for our health.)