The clock is springing ahead. Why do we keep changing the time despite a Florida law?
Despite Florida lawmakers voting to “lock the clock” in 2018, the hands of time will move forward an hour this weekend on a temporary basis. That means come fall, we’ll need to fall back again.
The time change officially happens at 2 a.m. Sunday. You don’t need to worry about your cellphones, tablets and computers, of course. But remember to adjust your stove, microwave oven and grandfather clocks. The best practice is to move your clock ahead one hour before going to bed Saturday night for all those non-automated time devices.
But why is it a temporary change for Floridians?
Let’s go back to 2018.
That year, the Florida Legislature passed the “Sunshine Protection Act,” which keeps Florida on daylight saving time, the act of moving your clocks ahead by one hour, permanently.
But to have it go into effect, the U.S. Congress has to approve it, because of the Uniform Time Act of 1966.
And that hasn’t happened.
In 2021, U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Longboat Key — whose congressional district represents Manatee County and parts of Sarasota and Hillsborough counties — introduced House Resolution 69, also called the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021.
The legislation said: “This bill makes daylight savings time the new, permanent standard time. States with areas exempt from daylight savings time may choose the standard time for those areas.”
Florida’s two senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, advocated for the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021 through S.623, a bill Rubio introduced last March with Scott as one of 14 co-sponsors. It included bipartisan support.
However, neither bill has passed through the House or the Senate, leaving Floridians like those in 48 other states with the need to push the clocks back in November and keeping this weekend’s spring-ahead time change temporary. Hawaii and most of Arizona are on standard time year-round.
Origins and opposition to daylight saving time
One of America’s founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, is often credited with the daylight saving time idea. Franklin wrote a 1784 essay about it as a way to conserve the need for lamp oil, while New Zealand entomologist George Hudson came up with the modern-day concept in 1895, so he had more daylight to look for bugs.
But the idea didn’t gain traction among U.S. lawmakers until World War I, and then in World War II as a wartime measure. The Uniform Time Act in 1966 made the change in time an annual passage throughout the country.
And while proponents want to stop changing the clocks twice a year, opponents — mainly parents and teachers — argue that a permanent daylight saving time means darker mornings and increased safety risks for children heading to school, whether it’s new teen drivers on the road or students walking to a bus stop or nearby school.
This story was originally published March 11, 2022 at 1:27 PM with the headline "The clock is springing ahead. Why do we keep changing the time despite a Florida law?."
