Opinion: This is the wrong way to handle daylight saving time

Last week, the House passed the Sunshine Protection Act of 2025 with bipartisan support, as evidenced by a 308-117 vote. It will now move to the Senate for consideration. President Trump has stated he will sign it into law if it reaches his desk. 

This is the first time that the House has managed to pass a bill making daylight saving time permanent. In the past, the Senate passed such laws, which eventually stalled in the House or expired. With the House bill mirroring what the Senate passed previously, it seems plausible that permanent daylight time will become law. But don’t start celebrating the end of biannual clock changes just yet — there are headwinds that could stop the bill from reaching the president’s desk.

Permanent daylight saving time was tried back in 1973-1974, during the Middle East oil crisis. By shifting more daylight from the morning hours to the afternoon hours, the belief was that energy would be saved. It was initially welcomed but then rejected. Parents raged as school children were forced to wait for buses in the dark morning hours, creating unacceptable risks and angst. 

The question today is whether enough has changed over the past 50 years that would make permanent daylight saving time more acceptable. Polls suggest that people are split on their preference between permanent daylight time and permanent standard time. Opting for one over the other presents political risks to any lawmaker, potentially alienating one-half of their constituents.

Note that another bill circulating in Congress, the Sunshine for our Kids Act, offers to make standard time permanent instead. It has support from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, which states that standard time, not daylight time, offers a better health option. But this bill also gives states the flexibility to use year-round daylight time. Note that the Uniform Time Act of 1966 allowed for year-round standard time if a state did not want to toggle between daylight saving time and standard time. Indiana, Arizona and Hawaii, all or in part, took advantage of this provision. 

At present, daylight saving time lasts for around eight months each year, and standard time is used for the remaining four months. Since 1975, there have been gradual shifts toward more daylight time and less standard time. Yet the impact of daylight saving time varies widely across the states and in individual cities, depending on how far they are from the equator and where they are located within their time zone.

In general, states farther south, like Florida, Louisiana, and Texas, are minimally affected. Maine, Washington and Alaska, in contrast, experience wide shifts in daylight across the calendar. 

Then there is the east-west location of cities within a time zone. Boston is located on the far east end of the Eastern time zone, whereas Indianapolis is on the far west side. Using daylight time during the winter months in Boston would still provide reasonable morning light (around 8AM). But Indianapolis would not see sunrise until after 9 a.m.

Chicago is on the far east side of the Central time zone, so it would experience morning light similar to Boston, but Boise, Idaho, at the far west end of the Mountain time zone, would also experience very late morning light, like Indianapolis.

Imposing a one-size-fits-all policy across the entire nation is simple, but it will have significantly different effects in states and cities, virtually guaranteeing large factions of unhappy people.  That may explain why biannual clock changes have persisted for so long. 

This begs the question: Is there a way to provide a simple solution that offers the best of both worlds?

Instead of limiting the choice between only daylight and standard time, one solution is to shift the clock by 30 minutes and keep it there. If this were enacted into law, on Nov. 6, 2026, clocks would fall back by 30 minutes for one last time, and stay there. 

Those who support permanent daylight saving time would get some of their extra evening daylight during the summer months. Those who support standard time would get some of their extra morning daylight in the winter months. The best outcome from such a policy is that clocks would no longer need to be changed biannually. 

Moving beyond the all-or-nothing binary mindset and observing that time is fungible means that once the 30-minute time shift is executed, it will become the norm. Such a policy would require quick and decisive movement by lawmakers, given that the 119th Congress will end on Jan. 3, 2027. Yet without such action, clock change chaos will continue, and bills that work to end it are likely to continue to absorb time and attention of lawmakers without ever reaching the finish line. 

Sheldon H. Jacobson, Ph.D., is a professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He applies his expertise in data-driven risk-based decision-making to evaluate and inform public policy.

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