Q&A – Why Some States Don’t Have to Change the Time - Driven By Braman Motorcars
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Social: @brianmuddradio
iHeartRadio: Use the Talkback feature – the microphone button on our station’s page in the iHeart app.
Today’s Entry: Submitted via Talkback asking about why Hawaii (and other locations) are opted out of time changes.
Bottom Line: I love this question for multiple reasons – including this question providing me with an opportunity to once again bang the drum about the opportunity (that’s a real possibility) to put an end to time changes during the current congress. Today’s question is in reaction to a story during the show yesterday reporting on a Senate hearing that took place on Thursday for the purpose of considering the Florida-inspired Sunshine Protection Act. The Act was authored in the current congress by Senator Rick Scott, who was the governor who signed the Sunshine Protection Act into law. Anyway, in the report it was mentioned that Hawaii and other territories had legislatively opted out. So how did that happen?
In order to answer the question, it’s helpful to revisit how we got here. Here’s a quick refresh...
The first observed time change took place on April 30th, 1916, by Germany and Austria. The cited reason was to conserve energy during World War I. Two years later the United States took it up as well. The first time change observed in the United States took place on March 31st, 1918, also as an effort to conserve energy during the war. After the first World War it was repealed in the United States and didn’t show up again until the second World War. FDR brought it back in 1942 calling it “War Time”. It remained in place through the end of the war but was repealed once again following the war in 1945. The current incarnation of our twice-a-year time change schedule was signed into law in 1974 as part of the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act.
It was under that federal law passed in 1974 that Florida, and most of the country, was forced into the current twice a year time change schedule. It’s also why Florida’s law, which was passed seven years ago, still hasn’t taken effect. Due to the Supremacy Clause in the U.S. Constitution, states aren’t allowed to usurp federal authority. This is why the battle has been ongoing in congress for the better part of a decade, First led by Marco Rubio and now by Rick Scott for Florida’s law to be recognized. But in answer to today’s question, why is it that Florida’s law isn’t recognized but Hawaii's is?
While the current incarnation of time changes was mandated federally in 1974, the process of time changes was first established under federal law in The Uniform Time Act of 1966. Prior to 1966, some states observed time changes on their own, others didn’t. States that did, often did their own thing. It created confusion – especially in an era in which intrastate travel had become common. The Act regulated time changes federally. So basically, if a state was going to change the time, they’d have to do it the way the federal government would say it should be done. But again, the act didn’t mandate that states must change the time twice a year until the Energy Act in ‘74. Between 1966 and the energy act’s passage in 1974 Two states – Arizona and Hawaii, and several U.S. territories – American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands told the federal government to pound sand (or something like that).
Those states and territories, anticipating that the federal government might seek to further control time within states in the future, passed laws stating that they’d not recognize time changes – keeping the clock locked, as Rick Scott would say, at all times. As a result of those states and territories already having time change policies in place, when the 1974 Act was drawn up it granted exclusions for those territories and states.
So that’s why the two states and various U.S. territories don’t have to follow the federal mandates. The Arizona and Hawaiian example of expressed state policy is also why Florida made the move to pass the law in 2018 which up to this point has been ineffectual. The policy is in place that that if/when there’s an opportunity to undue the federal mandate, Florida’s policy will already be in place. Policy, that if recognized before this fall, would mean we’d never change the time again in this state.