alt Hacker NewsNotably Washington state legislated the same change to DST years ago (instead of standard time, the morons!) but the federal government never approved the switch. AFAIK it's still pending. I remain unclear what authority the federal government has over such a matter and why Washington (or any other) state has opted to respect it. What are they going to do if a state just ignores them and switches their clocks?
Sometimes I get the impression that the spirit of states rights in the US has died.
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If US states want to get rid of time switches they are free to go to year-round Standard Time (like Arizona).
I read elsewhere this may be partial reason why BC forged ahead. As Canada/US relationship is on the rocks and BC stopped waiting for the US to change.
It is crazy, because there is actually a law that allows us to switch to year round PST if we want (but no one wants that), while we need congressional approval to switch to PDT year round (which is what everyone wants) and the house voted for it, but the senate simply didn't make it a priority.
I believe both Oregon and Washington have passed bills, but both require CA to also pass so that the whole west coast moves. CA has still not passed a bill.
It was only ever a thing to promote civil war grievances.
> Sometimes I get the impression that the spirit of states rights in the US has died.
It was bullshit from day one. The origin of the state's rights argument was slave state's attempting to force free states to round up fugitive slave and return them to the slave states.
The more I think about it the less sure I am if I would prefer a permanent switch to be standard or daylight time. On one hand I really dislike winter months and work starting in complete darkness. So always enjoy the time change and mornings soon after feeling brighter. But on the other hand come summer I really love getting off work and going to the beach. So I will have more sun hours this way which is big. I really thought they would split the difference and just go 30 minutes but guess that would be challenging for many reasons.
> I remain unclear what authority the federal government has over such a matter
It's actually an enumerated power under Article I, Section 8, Clause 5:
> [The Congress shall have Power...] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; ...
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C5-1/...