The Politics of Daylight Saving Time
The debate around whether to fall back and spring forward has been heating up in state legislatures.
U.S. clocks fall back this Sunday to mark the end of daylight saving time (DST)—but lawmakers in many states are increasingly trying to avoid the time change.
In the last year, fourteen state legislatures have debated bills aimed at changing the way we keep time, according to Tufts University professor Michael Downing, author of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time. He says that’s an unusually high number.
States are free to debate the issue, since the federal government doesn’t require them to follow the time change. And currently, Hawaii, Arizona (except the Navajo Nation), and a handful of U.S. territories don’t bother with DST.
There are a number of reasons why the other states might not want