"I hate the time shift, just pick one!" (Almost no one likes the time shift, about 90% of people want us to just stay with one. The problem is, 50% of those people want standard time year round and 50% want daylight time)
"California and Florida already voted to stay on Daylight time year round, why don't they?" (Because congress has to pass a law to let them, states can only choose to stay on standard time year round)
"Daylight time year round causes health problems" (There is some weakly supported evidence that this is true, that the human body really wants noon to be at solar noon)
Every single association for sleep research and chronobiology that has put out a position paper on the topic has said that standard ("winter") time year-round is best for human health:
Does Congress actually have the power to stop a state adopting whatever time zone it wants?
15 USC 260a(b) expressly supersedes state laws specifying different changeover dates for daylight savings time, and 260a(c) authorizes the Department of Transportation to apply for a federal court injunction against violations of that section.
But, 15 USC 260a doesn't govern what standard time zone applies to each state. That is governed by 15 USC 261 thru 265. However, unlike section 260a, sections 261 thru 265 don't contain any provision analogous to 260a(c), authorizing USDOT to apply for a federal court injunction to enforce it. One might argue that means injunctive relief isn't available for 261 thru 265, hence rendering 261 thru 265 effectively unenforceable. One might also argue that the absence of any provision analogous to 260a(b), expressly superseding state laws, means 261 thru 265 don't supersede state laws, unlike 260a. Of course, we'd have to wait and see what the federal courts make of such an argument, if they ever get presented with it.
Furthermore, 15 USC 261(a) grants the Secretary of Transportation the authority to specify the boundaries between time zones. This means the Secretary of Transportation could potentially move a state to an adjacent time zone without needing any Congressional approval.
Finally, 15 USC 260a(c) grants the Secretary of Transportation the power to apply for a court injunction of enforcement – which could be read as implying only the Secretary of Transportation has this power - meaning if the Secretary of Transportation chose to "turn a blind eye" to a violation, nobody else would have the legal power to do anything about it.
So perhaps you are missing some other laws that govern this? Or perhaps it's a declaration from the Secretary of Transportation that has never been changed?
If you go by what the law says on its face – yes, you need either approval from Congress or the Secretary, and probably the Secretary has made clear they are unlikely to agree to use whatever powers they technically have in this area.
If you start coming up with inventive legal arguments – then it comes down to whether you can convince the courts to accept them. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. But obviously this is a much more legally risky strategy.
Although, at least in this case, it is unlikely that anyone will go to prison if the courts don't like their inventive legal argument. Still, it would require state officials to risk being ruled against by federal court, and some of them might not view the political consequences of that as acceptable.
Time zone preference is only a problem for the people not saying "just pick one". If 90% of people say "just pick one" then we could flip a coin (or commission a study).
The people saying "just pick one" usually care deeply about which one is picked. We've already done surveys and studies. 45% of the people really want to be on standard time year round, 45% of the people want to be on daylight time year round. The rest don't care.
So we keep the status quo because we can't agree on what to change it to.
> 45% of the people really want to be on standard time year round, 45% of the people want to be on daylight time year round. The rest don't care.
So you think the people that want the swapping to end above all else are a rounding error? I don't. I think it's a significant group of people.
Also it would only take a few of them to break a deadlock.
For example, let's say 42% of voters want standard, 42% want summer, 6% want either, and 10% don't care very much. Of that last 10%, let's pessimistically say that 2/3 will vote against any change and 1/3 will vote yes.
If you put up a vote to end daylight savings in either direction, 42% + 6% + 3.3% vote yes, and 42% + 6.7% vote no. It passes.
No, they are the 90%.
When you said the 90% "care deeply about which one is picked", I thought you were saying they cared about that more than the end of daylight savings. If you're not saying that, and they care about it less than the end of daylight savings, then it doesn't matter that they "care deeply about which one is picked". They'll still support ending it in either direction. Do a poll for either option, show 90% support, do it.
The past two years they have tried to take up the opposite -- going to permanent standard time, in association with WA, OR, NV, and ID, so that most of the West would be on the same time zone year round. But that hasn't gotten out of committee.
"Why should we move the clocks off from (close to) the solar-noon standard? If people want to get up and go to work earlier so as not to 'waste sun', they can do that, and just coordinate it, no need to change the clocks."
I hear this argument frequently, every year. But here's the thing, I've got a great way to do that coordinating. It's called daylight saving time. DST is our way to collectively, without every single business having to change their posted office hours and every school having to adjust their starting times and every club having to adjust their meeting times, agree to move all times one hour earlier/later so as to better line up with the sun. DST itself _is_ the mechanism by which we collectively make that shift.
And it's a good idea.
> and just coordinate it
I have never heard that argument before. Why does it need to be coordinated instead of a personal choice?
I've only ever heard the argument of keeping the time fixed and then people can wake up earlier or later depending on their personal preference instead of it being coordinated (mandated) by law.
Let's get rid of timezones altogether.
E.G. a normal person wants to know roughly: morning, mid-day, evening +/- offset. Durations also matter, so an oversimplified version that uses numbers to represent those values appeals to some. 0800, 1400, 2000 (or in lay person time 8am 2pm 8pm)
However the further from the equator anyone is, the less those numbers hold ANY stability or reality over the course of a year. E.G. even in Seattle it barely gets to twilight overnight during the summer, and the length of a day from bright enough to do anything to too dim to safely do stuff is insane. https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/seattle (Take Jun 20: 1:43 of real night, nearly 16 hours of 'real day', and LOTS of practically day besides). Contrast to Orlando https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/orlando (June 20: 6:54 Night, nearly 14 hours of 'real day')
Which is to say, DST doesn't really do much of anything, other than give very equatorial places a slightly easier way of making the evening brighter longer and making it MUCH harder to get to sleep on time with all that bright light.
I think this is a case where people only understood the drawbacks through practical experience.
It was widely disliked and dropped as soon as the oil crises was over.
https://thehill.com/homenews/nexstar_media_wire/5149485-dayl...
Or, crazy idea I know, but what if we just shifted the school start time by an hour instead??
Lifestyle preferences around sunlight should not dictate the clock.