Here is a helpful guide to Daylight Saving Time bills in state legislatures, and in D.C.
For the very latest, be sure to follow us on Twitter.
To see every bill in your state for 2021, see the map below.
Federal Bills
For the new Congress that started in 2021, the first two bills to address this issue are on the House side.
The first, the Sunshine Protection Act, would make what we now call Daylight Saving Time the new permanent time. Only those states that have already opted to move into permanent Standard Time would be exempt.
The second bill introduced, the Daylight Act, which will allow states to decide if they want to stay in DST, or keep switching. This bill, in my view, is not ideal because it could create the kind of patchwork that lead to the Uniform Time Act of 1966. It could get amended, though, so we shall see.
The third bill introduced is the one that’s getting the most attention, a bill sponsored by Marco Rubio, and co-sponsored by a nice array of Senators from both parties.
To see what's going on with those bills, you can look below in the list of bills that are listed under “US” as the state, or you can read my in-depth look at the current status here.
I am now talking to the staff working on all these bills. I can tell you that there is a lot more energy about these bills now at the start of 2021 than there was at this time two years ago. It is really exciting!
Every two years all the bills that did not pass just fade away, even though their digital footprint remains. If you want to read about what happened before with the Sunshine Protetion Act in the U.S. Senate, you can see that. (I wrote about it here, here and well, a bunch of times.) I'm also working directly with the office of the sponsor, and doing some other stuff behind the scenes to help. I've posted information here if you’d like to help.
There was also a bill last session introduced in the U.S. House, the Daylight Act.
Europe
If you are looking for what’s going on with the changes to Summertime rules in Europe, I'm afraid I can't be much help as it seems a bit obtuse. It had looked like there will be no more clock changing as of 2021, but the more research I did, it now looks like Europe will be stuck with Summertime/Wintertime for a while.
State Bills
The grid below shows all the bills for the 2021 legislative session.
Also, states like Florida that passed a bill in previous years will not be on that list because they already passed their bills. (See below for more on that.)
See my How To Help guide for the best ways to get involved.
Some individual states have more information below.
For updates when there are major milestones in this fight, sign up here for a very occasional email, or follow us on Twitter.
Latest tweet by @lock_the_clock
Interactive list of bills currently in front of legislatures
Interactive map of bills currently in front of legislatures
Note that this is the bills active right now, and does not include bills from previous years. To see if I've written about your state, type it in to the search box on the right. If you want me to write about your state (or if you’d like to write about your state) just contact me.
Both the list and the map are courtesy of the best source for
state legislative data in the free world: Bill Track 50!
Interactive map of progress since 2018
States that have passed something:
- California passed a voter initiative in 2018 allowing the legislature to pass something,
then: - Florida
and then in 2019: - Delaware
- Maine
- Oregon
- Tennessee
- Washington
- also with a resolution were: Utah (which in 2020 passed a law)
- and Arkansas
and in 2020: - South Carolina
- Ohio with a resolution
- Georgia with a resolution, and then a law in 2021
- Idaho
- Wyoming
- Louisiana
and in 2021: - Mississippi
- Montana
In some ways, Massachusetts should be first on that list when it created a study commission in 2017. That study recommended that the Bay State move to Atlantic Standard Time, the equivalent of Permanent DST.
For more, the National Conference of State Legislatures keeps an excellent page.
Here is the story for my home state of Colorado.
Just so it’s handy, here’s a page with all the bills from last year:
