Daylight saving time is not going away anytime soon, despite years of public frustration and repeated legislative attempts. The twice-yearly clock change remains federal law in the United States, and while bills to end it keep getting introduced in Congress, none have made it across the finish line. The gap between public desire and political action on this issue is wide and, so far, persistent.
Where Federal Legislation Stands
The most prominent effort to end clock changes is the Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight saving time permanent year-round. The bill has been reintroduced multiple times. The U.S. Senate actually passed a version unanimously in March 2022, catching many senators off guard (some later said they hadn’t fully understood what they were voting for). The House never brought it to a vote, and it died when that Congress ended.
A new version, the Sunshine Protection Act of 2025, was introduced in the House in January 2025. It sits in committee with no scheduled vote. This cycle of introduction, media attention, and quiet expiration has repeated for years. The core problem isn’t a lack of interest. It’s a lack of agreement on which permanent time to choose, and whether Congress should prioritize the issue at all.
Why Congress Can’t Agree
The sticking point is deceptively simple: if you eliminate the time change, do you lock the clocks on daylight saving time or standard time? These produce very different results depending on where you live. Permanent daylight saving time means more evening light in winter but painfully late sunrises. In northern cities like Detroit or Seattle, the sun wouldn’t rise until nearly 9 a.m. in January. Permanent standard time preserves morning light but means summer sunsets would arrive an hour earlier than people are used to.
This same disagreement has stalled reform internationally. The European Parliament voted in 2019 to end seasonal time changes across the EU, but member states couldn’t agree on which time to adopt. Years later, nothing has changed. The pattern is the same on both sides of the Atlantic: abolishing the clock change sounds easy until you have to pick a replacement.
The Health Case for Ending Clock Changes
The medical evidence against the biannual time switch is strong and growing. The spring “spring forward” transition, when clocks move ahead and everyone loses an hour of sleep, is consistently linked to a spike in health emergencies. Heart attack risk increases by about 24% on the Monday after the spring transition. A large analysis of more than 732,000 fatal traffic accidents in the U.S. between 1996 and 2017 found that the spring change increased fatal crash risk by 6%, translating to roughly 28 preventable deaths per year. The risk was highest in the morning hours and in communities on the western edges of their time zones, where the sun already rises later.
Notably, the fall transition, when clocks move back and people gain an hour, does not show the same spike in accidents. This supports the idea that the problem isn’t confusion about what time it is. It’s the acute sleep loss and circadian disruption that come from jumping forward.
What Sleep Scientists Actually Recommend
Here’s where public opinion and expert opinion diverge sharply. Most polls show Americans prefer permanent daylight saving time, with its longer summer evenings. But the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the leading professional body for sleep research, has taken a firm position in the opposite direction: permanent standard time is the optimal choice for health and safety.
Their reasoning centers on how the body’s internal clock works. Your circadian rhythm is set primarily by sunlight, especially morning light. When the sun rises, light signals your brain to suppress the sleep hormone melatonin, raise your body temperature, and release cortisol to help you wake up. Standard time keeps the clock closer to solar noon, meaning the sun’s position roughly matches what your biology expects. Daylight saving time pushes the social clock an hour ahead of the sun, creating a chronic mismatch between when your body thinks it should sleep and when your alarm goes off.
This mismatch isn’t just about grogginess. The AASM’s updated position statement, published in 2023, cites evidence linking it to risks to both physical and mental health. People living on the western edges of time zones, who already experience a version of this misalignment year-round, tend to have higher rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and certain cancers compared to those on the eastern edges who get earlier sunlight.
What States Have Done on Their Own
Frustrated by federal inaction, many states have tried to take matters into their own hands. More than a dozen state legislatures have passed bills or resolutions expressing a preference for permanent daylight saving time. But here’s the catch: under current federal law, states can opt out of daylight saving time and stay on permanent standard time (Hawaii and most of Arizona already do this), but they cannot adopt permanent daylight saving time without an act of Congress. So most of these state-level bills are essentially symbolic, conditional on Congress changing the rules first.
This legal asymmetry is important. Any state could, right now, stop changing clocks by choosing permanent standard time. The fact that almost none have done so suggests the preference for longer evening light runs deep, even if sleep scientists say it’s the worse option for health.
What’s Likely to Happen
The realistic outlook is that clock changes will continue for the foreseeable future. Congress has shown no urgency to act, the expert community and the public disagree on which permanent time to adopt, and the issue lacks the political weight to force a resolution. The Sunshine Protection Act of 2025 could gain traction, but identical bills have stalled in previous sessions with no sign that the underlying disagreements have been resolved.
If you’re hoping to stop changing your clocks, the honest answer is: not yet. The science, the public will, and the political momentum all point in different directions, and until they converge, twice a year you’ll still be adjusting every clock in your house.