It will soon be time, once again, for our clocks to “fall back.” Nov. 1 is the date most places in the U.S. quit daylight saving time for 2026 and go back to standard time. We're still on this clock-changing treadmill, despite legislation that was supposed to eliminate it a few years ago, and despite medical professionals warning that these clock changes are bad for our health.
For example, a study out of the Stanford School of Medicine found that switching the time back and forth every year probably contributes to increased rates of stroke and obesity. Permanent daylight saving time would be an improvement on that, and permanent standard time would be even better, health-wise. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine published a position paper a few years ago stating that scientific evidence supports the idea "that the United States should eliminate seasonal time changes in favor of permanent standard time, which aligns best with human circadian biology."
But despite all this, we’ll still have to turn the clocks ahead again in spring. So whatever happened to those bills in Congress aiming to abolish the time changes?
The most recent attempt to eliminate clock changes failed
The Sunshine Protection Act was a federal bill that would have made Daylight Saving Time permanent. If enacted, it would have taken effect on Nov. 5, 2023, the date that we would otherwise have changed the clocks. The result would be that our winter mornings would stay dark an hour longer than they currently do, but we’d get an hour more of daylight in the winter evenings.
The bill passed the Senate in March of 2022, but it wasn't taken up by the House of Representatives. In July of 2026, a similar law passed the House of Representatives, and President Trump wrote on Truth Social this month that "Republicans in the Senate have to get moving on what I call the 'No More Changing of Clocks Act.'" The Senate Majority Leader said it doesn't have the support to pass, since it would mean dark mornings for commuters and for children waiting for morning buses.
Which time would we stay with if we stopped changing the clocks?
We operate on two different times throughout the year: "standard time" and "daylight saving time." These even get their own time zones! For example, if a time is marked as "EST," that means eastern standard time, which is different from eastern daylight time.
Standard time is the one we use in winter, and daylight saving time is the one we use in summer. The bill mentioned above would have done away with standard time and kept us on daylight saving time year-round. Meanwhile, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine has taken the position that we should stay on standard time (that is, winter time) year-round, since screwing with our circadian rhythms twice a year has detrimental effects on our health and safety. If they got their way, we would fall back some year and then never spring forward again.
What about state laws?
States have their own ideas about what time it should be. Currently, states are not allowed to switch to permanent daylight saving time, but they are allowed to stay on standard time year-round if they prefer. Two states do so: Hawaii and Arizona (minus the parts of Arizona in the Navajo nation).
Nineteen states have passed laws or resolutions that would allow them to switch to permanent daylight saving time if the federal government ever allows them to do so. Those states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, are Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Three other states have made attempts to join the list: Similar bills made it partway through the Kentucky and Ohio legislatures but were not signed into law. California voters have authorized a law that isn’t yet officially on the books.
Until a federal law passes, those states are stuck with their current time zones. Current federal law, as passed in 1966, allows states to opt out of daylight saving time (as Hawaii and Arizona have) but does not offer a way for states to make daylight saving time permanent or to choose their own dates for changing the clocks. If you’re sick of time changes, you can always move to one of the territories that don’t observe daylight saving, which include the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.