The Reason Florida Still Changes Its Clocks in November After Voting to Stop
Soon enough, you’ll be turning your clocks back an hour again.
Florida lawmakers tried to end that years ago, yet the switch is still coming.
Here’s why you still can’t skip it.
Florida’s 2018 Sunshine Protection Vote
Florida passed a law called the Sunshine Protection Act back in 2018.
The idea was simple: Stop the twice-a-year clock flip and stay on Daylight Saving Time for good.
The vote wasn’t close.
Florida’s Senate passed it 33 to 2.
The House followed 103 to 11.
Florida became the first state in the country to pass a law like it.
Rick Scott was governor at the time, and he signed the bill into law that March.
It took effect that July.
Read closely, and the bill’s wording explains why nothing changed anyway.
The Law Standing in the Way
Florida’s 2018 law ran headfirst into a federal rule that no state gets to override alone.
Under the Uniform Time Act, a state can exempt itself from Daylight Saving Time and stay on standard time all year.
It just can’t flip the switch the other way.
No exceptions.
The U.S. Department of Transportation, which enforces the nation’s time laws, says a state doesn’t have the authority to choose to be on permanent Daylight Saving Time.
That one sentence is the whole ballgame.
Florida’s Fine-Print Problem
Florida’s Sunshine Protection Act is only a request.
It only tells Congress what the Florida Legislature wants, once federal law allows it.
A second catch sits in that same bill: One Legislature can’t bind a future Legislature.
Lawmakers in Tallahassee would likely have to vote again even after Congress acts.
The Closest Vote in Congress
The federal fix Florida’s 2018 law needs finally reached a vote this year.
A Florida congressman, Vern Buchanan, introduced the federal bill in the U.S. House.
The House passed the Sunshine Protection Act of 2025 on July 14, 2026, by a lopsided 308 to 117.
President Trump had publicly pushed for the vote and is expected to sign the bill if it ever reaches his desk.
It never got that far.
Rick Scott, who signed Florida’s original law as governor back in 2018, is now a U.S. senator.
He has pushed the same fix in Washington for years.
Psst! How much do you know about the history of changing the clocks? Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
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Clock-Change IQ
See how much you know about the history of changing the clocks. We bet you can’t get every question right. Prove us wrong?
A British builder published a pamphlet in 1907 arguing his country was wasting daylight. What did he push for?
Gridlock in the Senate
The Senate is where the federal fix has stalled.
The bill had been sitting with the Senate Commerce Committee since mid-July, with no vote scheduled as of mid-September, per recent reporting.
Part of the holdup is simply the calendar.
Senators spent much of September on an unrelated fight over cryptocurrency rules, leaving little floor time for anything else, per TechTimes.
Clearing the Senate usually takes 60 votes, and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas isn't the only Republican withholding support.
The math isn't there.
Cotton has pointed to darker school-morning walks in winter as a safety risk, and he has cited sleep researchers who favor permanent standard time instead.
He has also brought up the country's last experiment with year-round Daylight Saving Time, back in 1974.
Congress reversed that experiment within ten months.
News reports at the time counted eight students killed in Florida traffic in the weeks after the switch.
A National Safety Council review afterward found no notable increase in early-morning student deaths that year, according to National Geographic, though the political damage was already done.
Senators still bring up that history in every debate on the subject.
Unless the Senate passes the bill and the president signs it before November 1, Florida's clocks fall back right on schedule, same as every other year since 2018.
Eighteen Other States in Line
Florida wasn't the only state counting on a federal fix that never arrived.
The National Conference of State Legislatures tracks 19 states that have passed similar laws.
Every one of them is waiting on the same congressional action Florida asked for back in 2018.
Nineteen and counting.
Delaware, Maine, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington followed within a year.
Alabama, Georgia, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Montana joined a few years after that.
Texas became the 19th state to sign on, in 2025.
Texas' law works exactly like Florida's: A promise that only takes effect once Congress changes the federal rule.
Arizona and Hawaii's Shortcut
Florida ran into Congress because it tried to move in the one direction the Uniform Time Act doesn't allow on its own.
Arizona and Hawaii went the other way decades ago, and neither state needed anyone's permission to do it.
The U.S. Department of Transportation says a state can exempt itself from Daylight Saving Time under that same 1966 law with nothing more than a state law.
No vote in Congress required.
Arizona hasn't observed the time change since 1968, according to CBS News.
The state's evenings run hot enough already, and pushing sunset back an hour just meant longer air-conditioning bills each summer.
Hawaii made the same call a year earlier, in 1967, since its position near the equator means daylight hours barely shift between seasons anyway.
The islands had tried Daylight Saving Time once before, for three weeks in 1933, before lawmakers scrapped it.
Neither opt-out is complete, though.
The Navajo Nation, whose land stretches into northeastern Arizona, still observes Daylight Saving Time to stay synced with Utah and New Mexico.
The result: Two different times run inside the same state for half the year.
That's the whole difference between those two states and Florida.
Skipping the switch takes one state law, but adding it back the way the Sunshine Protection Act wants takes an act of Congress.
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