What Is the Sunshine Protection Act? | Permanent Daylight Saving Time, Senate, Clock Changes & Key Facts

The Sunshine Protection Act of 2025 (H.R. 139) is a federal bill that would make daylight saving time permanent nationwide, ending the twice-yearly clock change. The House passed it 308-117 on July 14, 2026, but the Senate has not voted on it and is now in recess until after the November 3, 2026 midterm election, meaning Americans will still change their clocks this November.

What Is the Sunshine Protection Act?

The Sunshine Protection Act is a federal bill that would stop the United States from switching between standard time and daylight saving time twice a year, locking the country permanently onto daylight saving time instead. Under current law, most of the country springs forward in March and falls back in November; this bill would end the November change entirely, keeping clocks on daylight saving time all year round, every year, starting the date the law takes effect.

The bill has already cleared one chamber of Congress in 2026, a milestone it has never previously reached. On July 14, 2026, the House of Representatives passed the Sunshine Protection Act of 2025 (H.R. 139) by a vote of 308-117, sending it to the Senate. This report covers exactly what the bill does, where it stands in Congress right now, how this year’s path through the House and Senate compares with the bill’s earlier, failed attempts, and what it would actually mean for clocks, sunrise, and sunset times if it becomes law.

The debate over permanent daylight saving time is not new, but 2026 has given it fresh urgency. The bill arrives in an election year, with both chambers facing a compressed legislative calendar and a Senate now focused on campaigning ahead of the November midterms rather than floor votes on measures without an urgent deadline. That timing is central to understanding why a bill that cleared the House by more than a two-to-one margin still has no scheduled path to a Senate vote this year.

Interesting Facts About the Sunshine Protection Act in 2026

SUNSHINE PROTECTION ACT: 2026 LEGISLATIVE TIMELINE
Mar 8, 2026    DST begins
Jul 14, 2026   House passes bill 308-117
Jul 2026+      Senate: referred to committee, no vote
Nov 1, 2026    DST ends; clocks fall back as usual

Source: Congress.gov, H.R. 119-139; U.S. House of Representatives roll call votes, July 2026; National Conference of State Legislatures.

The 308-117 House vote is the furthest the Sunshine Protection Act has ever advanced in that chamber; in its most recent prior attempt, the Senate passed a similar version unanimously in 2022, only for the bill to die in the House without ever coming to a vote, the exact reverse of this year’s situation. That earlier failure is part of why this year’s House passage drew so much attention: for the first time, the bill reached the opposite chamber with real legislative momentum behind it.

That momentum has stalled in the Senate. The bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, the same committee that handled the 2022 version, but with the Senate now in recess and not scheduled to return until after the November 3, 2026 midterm election, there is no realistic path for a vote before Americans set their clocks back on November 1. Floridians and everyone else observing daylight saving time will go through the standard clock change this fall regardless of the bill’s standing in Congress.

Sunshine Protection Act 2026 – House Vote Breakdown

HOUSE VOTE ON H.R. 139, JULY 14, 2026
Yes   ███████████████████████████████ 308
No    ████████████ 117

Source: U.S. House of Representatives, roll call vote records, July 14, 2026.

A 308-117 margin is a decisively bipartisan result for a House chamber that frequently splits closer to party lines on contested legislation, reflecting how little the underlying idea, ending the twice-yearly clock change, tracks along conventional partisan divides. Polling going back years has consistently shown a majority of Americans want to stop changing their clocks, even when they disagree on whether the permanent choice should be daylight saving time or standard time, and the House vote margin broadly mirrors that public sentiment.

The 117 no votes are worth examining on their own terms, since opposition to the bill does not fall neatly along a single line of reasoning. Some lawmakers who voted against it have cited the 1970s energy-crisis experiment and its unpopular dark winter mornings as a reason to prefer permanent standard time instead of permanent daylight saving time. Others have raised the position taken by many sleep scientists and public health researchers, who generally favor permanent standard time on the grounds that it aligns more closely with the body’s natural circadian rhythm, a scientific argument that cuts against the specific choice this bill makes.

Passage in the House does not guarantee Senate action, however, and that gap is precisely where the bill now sits. Unlike a bill that fails outright, H.R. 139 is simply waiting, referred to committee with no scheduled vote, a limbo that previous versions of the Sunshine Protection Act have also experienced, just in the opposite chamber. For the fuller picture of how the full Senate’s current composition and voting dynamics could affect a future vote on this bill, the US Senate statistics report breaks down the chamber’s current party balance and procedural thresholds in detail.

What the Sunshine Protection Act Would Actually Change

CURRENT CLOCK SCHEDULE vs. PROPOSED PERMANENT DST
Current: Springs forward (Mar), falls back (Nov)   █ twice yearly
Proposed: Permanent daylight saving time           no fall-back, ever

Source: H.R. 139 bill text summary; Congress.gov; Uniform Time Act of 1966, as amended.

The bill’s mechanism is simple: it would amend the Uniform Time Act of 1966 to repeal the requirement that states revert to standard time each November, effectively locking the country onto daylight saving time permanently rather than cycling between the two. States currently exempt from daylight saving time entirely, meaning Hawaii and most of Arizona, would retain the choice to opt into permanent standard time instead under the bill’s framework, preserving their existing flexibility rather than forcing every state onto the same clock.

This would not be the first time the country has tried permanent daylight saving time. During the 1973-74 energy crisis, Congress passed the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act, putting the entire country on daylight saving time year-round for what was meant to be a two-year trial. That experiment proved unpopular almost immediately, particularly once winter arrived and children were going to school in the dark, and Congress repealed the year-round mandate before the trial period even finished, a historical episode supporters of the current bill rarely emphasize and critics frequently cite as a cautionary precedent.

The practical effect of permanent daylight saving time is most visible in winter sunrise times, since the shift essentially moves an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening year-round rather than only during the warmer months. In the depths of winter, that means sunrise would arrive roughly an hour later than it does under the current standard-time winter schedule, in some northern and western parts of the Eastern and Central time zones pushing sunrise past 8 a.m. The bill’s supporters argue the later evening daylight outweighs that trade-off; its critics argue the opposite, and both sides generally agree the actual winter-morning effect is the crux of the disagreement rather than any dispute over the bill’s basic mechanics.

Sunshine Protection Act History: From 2021 to 2026

SUNSHINE PROTECTION ACT: LEGISLATIVE ATTEMPTS BY YEAR
2021   Introduced in Senate; no floor vote
2022   Senate passes unanimously (Mar 15); House takes no action
2023   Reintroduced; stalls in committee
2025   Sunshine Protection Act of 2025 introduced
2026   House passes 308-117 (Jul 14); Senate stalls

Source: Congress.gov legislative history records; U.S. Senate and House floor records, 2021-2026.

The bill’s journey across five years shows two chambers repeatedly passing each other like ships in the night. In 2022, the Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act unanimously by unanimous consent, a rare procedural step reserved for measures with no formal objection, only for the House to let the bill expire without so much as a committee vote by the end of that Congress. Three years later, the pattern flipped: the House passed its own version in 2026, while the Senate, the chamber that had once approved it without objection, has yet to act at all.

That reversal illustrates a recurring obstacle for time-change legislation specifically: broad, shallow support across the public and individual chambers has repeatedly failed to translate into the sustained, two-chamber momentum needed to actually reach a president’s desk. Neither chamber has managed to pass the bill in the same two-year Congress as the other since the modern version of the legislation was first introduced, a pattern that 2026’s House passage has not yet broken. For context on how a crowded legislative calendar and an approaching election affect which bills get floor time, the US midterm election statistics report covers the November 2026 election timeline the Senate recess is built around.

Even if the Senate eventually takes up H.R. 139, the path to the President’s desk is not automatic. If the Senate passes the bill with any amendments, the two chambers would need to reconcile the House and Senate versions, either through the House agreeing to the Senate’s changes or through a conference process, before a single final bill could be sent for a presidential signature. The 2022 episode never reached that stage, since the House took no action at all, so 2026 would represent uncharted territory even if the Senate does eventually act, simply because no version of this bill has made it past both chambers’ independent review in the modern legislative era.

2026 Daylight Saving Time Schedule Under Current Law

2026 DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME CALENDAR
Mar 8, 2026    DST begins, clocks spring forward
Nov 1, 2026    DST ends, clocks fall back

Source: U.S. Naval Observatory; Uniform Time Act of 1966, as amended by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Under current law, unaffected by the pending bill, daylight saving time in 2026 runs from March 8 to November 1, a roughly eight-month stretch that leaves only about four months, early November through early March, on standard time. That schedule reflects the 2005 Energy Policy Act’s extension of daylight saving time by four additional weeks beginning in 2007, which pushed the start date earlier into March and the end date later into November than the shorter DST period used throughout most of the 20th century.

Regardless of where the Sunshine Protection Act stands in the Senate, this schedule governs 2026: Americans in the 48 states and the District of Columbia that observe daylight saving time will set their clocks back on November 1, and the earliest the bill could plausibly change that outcome would be the 2027 transition, and only if the Senate acts, the bill is reconciled with the House version if amended, and it is signed into law well before next March.

Public Opinion and State-Level Action on Permanent DST

STATES THAT HAVE ACTED ON PERMANENT DST (pending federal approval)
States with laws/resolutions favoring permanent DST   ██████████████ at least 18
States that already exempt from DST entirely          ██  2 (HI, most of AZ)

Source: National Conference of State Legislatures; Florida Legislature, House Bill 1013 (2018).

At least 18 states have passed their own laws or legislative resolutions declaring they would adopt permanent daylight saving time if Congress allows it, a list that starts with Florida, whose own state-level Sunshine Protection Act, signed into law in 2018, directly inspired the federal bill’s name and gave the national push its early momentum. Under the Uniform Time Act of 1966, states can opt out of daylight saving time entirely and adopt permanent standard time on their own, which is exactly what Arizona and Hawaii have done, but they cannot unilaterally adopt permanent daylight saving time without an act of Congress, which is the specific gap this bill is designed to close.

That legal asymmetry, state governments can choose permanent standard time freely but need federal permission for permanent daylight saving time, is the structural reason 18-plus state legislatures have passed bills that remain functionally inert until Washington acts. It also explains why the Sunshine Protection Act’s fate has become a recurring news story every time DST changes: millions of people in states that have already voted for the change are reminded twice a year that their own state law remains on hold, waiting on a Congress that has yet to pass the same bill through both chambers in a single session. Bills that clear one chamber but stall in the other are not unique to this issue; the SAVE Act statistics report tracks a separate piece of pending federal legislation facing a similar procedural bottleneck in 2026.

For Florida specifically, the state that originated the push, this dynamic has now stretched across most of a decade. The state legislature and governor signed off on permanent daylight saving time back in 2018, and Florida’s own congressional delegation has been among the bill’s most consistent champions in Washington in the years since. Yet Florida voters, like residents of every other DST-observing state, will still be changing their clocks this November, a reminder that a state-level law, however clearly passed, remains entirely symbolic on this particular question until Congress acts.

Sunshine Protection Act FAQs

What is the Sunshine Protection Act?

A federal bill that would make daylight saving time permanent nationwide, ending the twice-yearly clock change by eliminating the November shift back to standard time.

Did the Sunshine Protection Act pass in 2026?

The House passed it 308-117 on July 14, 2026. The Senate has not voted on it.

Will clocks change in November 2026?

Yes. Daylight saving time ends as scheduled on November 1, 2026, since the bill has not become law.

Has the Sunshine Protection Act ever passed before?

The Senate passed an earlier version unanimously in March 2022, but the House never voted on it before that Congress ended.

What committee is handling the bill in the Senate?

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

Why hasn’t the Senate voted on it yet?

The Senate is in recess and not scheduled to return until after the November 3, 2026 midterm election.

How many states support permanent daylight saving time?

At least 18 states have passed laws or resolutions favoring it, pending congressional approval.

Which states don’t observe daylight saving time at all?

Hawaii and most of Arizona already remain on standard time year-round.

Has the US tried permanent daylight saving time before?

Yes. During the 1973-74 energy crisis, a two-year trial of year-round daylight saving time proved unpopular and was repealed early.

What is the official bill number?

H.R. 139, the Sunshine Protection Act of 2025.

When does daylight saving time start and end in 2026?

It began March 8, 2026, and ends November 1, 2026, under current law.

Could the bill still become law before 2027?

It’s technically possible if the Senate acts quickly after returning from recess, but there is no scheduled vote, and the bill would still need to be signed into law in time to affect the next clock change.

Disclaimer: This research report is compiled from publicly available sources. While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, no representation or warranty, express or implied, is given as to the completeness or reliability of the information. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions, losses, or damages of any kind arising from the use of this report.

Email ID:

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.

Email

Email *

SUBSCRIBE