If you’re not a morning person, this is the weekend you dread all year.
It’s time to “spring forward” one hour at 2 a.m. Sunday for the start of daylight saving time, which means we lose an hour of sleep, with some people taking weeks to adjust to darker mornings and lighter evenings.
But wait — didn’t the Florida Legislature in 2018 do away with what U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Miami, calls “stupid” and an “antiquated practice?”
It did, which many thought would make daylight saving time permanent. Following Florida’s lead, 18 other states passed similar measures: Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
So why are we all still adjusting our clocks? LkldNow reached out to the governor’s office for an answer by 4 p.m. on Friday.
“Do you need it by 4 p.m. standard time or 4 p.m. daylight savings time?” Press Secretary Jeremy Redfern asked, tongue in cheek. “The real answer is that any state that passes legislation to stay on daylight savings time requires approving legislation from Congress.”
Unlike a lot going on in Washington, D.C., ending this biannual ritual has bipartisan support — but Congressional approval has been elusive.
In March 2022, the U.S. Senate passed Rubio’s Sunshine Protection Act through an unusual process called unanimous consent. No formal vote took place, but when the bill was introduced, no senator objected to its passage. However, a companion bill in the House never made it out of committee, so it did not become law.
Rubio and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., reintroduced the bill with 10 bipartisan cosponsors when the new Congress began last year. Rubio’s bill has been read twice and referred to a committee. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Brandon, filed a companion version that was referred to a House subcommittee but has languished ever since.
Could this weekend’s time change be the last? That’s what Rubio is hoping. He issued a statement Friday urging action.
“We’re ‘springing forward’ but should have never ‘fallen back.’ My Sunshine Protection Act would end this stupid practice of changing our clocks back and forth,” Rubio said in the news release.
In the meantime, you may want to go to bed earlier tonight.
Daylight saving time begins each year on the second Sunday in March and — barring action from Congress — ends on the first Sunday in November, which is Nov. 3 this year. It is scheduled to resume next year on March 9, 2025.
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