The Missouri House is ready to follow Congress when it decides the future of daylight saving time.
Representatives voted 107-31 on Tuesday on a bill specifying that if Congress moves to permanently stick with daylight time, Missouri would immediately have to follow.
President Donald Trump has previously urged Congress to permanently keep daylight time – the "spring forward" part of the year that lasts from March to November. The Sunshine Protection Act would do so, but it last passed the U.S. Senate in 2022 and did not come to a vote in the House.
"We are a very unique state that we have a metro on both borders," said Rep. Jamie Gragg, R-Ozark, who sponsored the bill. "That's why we have to take the lead, and we have to basically lock that down, or we're going to be controlled by our neighbors."
Gragg said it is a plausible scenario that Illinois or Kansas moves to permanent standard time, forcing the Missouri legislature to also get rid of the system the nation has used off and on for more than a century.
Otherwise, the 43% of Kansas residents in the Kansas City area would face a "really messed-up system," Gragg said.
"So, the folks that live over there, they'll come into the city and work and cross that line," Gragg said. "You're going to have half of the metro (on) standard time, and then the other half of the metro switching their clocks back and forth."
Arizona, Hawaii and the U.S. territories are the only areas that currently observe permanent standard time, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Federal law prevents states from moving to permanent daylight time, but 19 have approved trigger legislation like Gragg's.
Much of the debate over the bill concerned the merits of each system and which would be a better permanent choice.
Gragg said the extra hour of evening sunlight that comes with daylight time could encourage people to spend more time outside, potentially bolstering the state's tourism, recreation and dining industries.
Rep. Aaron Crossley, D-Independence, said permanent daylight time would mean northern parts of the state don't see the sun until 8:30 a.m. during some parts of the year.
"When other states have tried this and when the whole country tried this before, schoolchildren were getting killed at bus stops, and hit at bus stops by buses, because they were standing out in the dark," Crossley said, pointing to when the U.S. experimented with permanent daylight saving time in the 1970s.
Crossley and others who spoke on the legislation said switching the clocks twice a year is a threat to people's health because it has been shown to disrupt circadian rhythms and increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Most Missourians would seem to agree – a 2024 St. Louis University/YouGov poll found that just 16% of voters in the state prefer switching their clocks twice a year.
HB 1758 now goes to the Senate, where it may not even be considered with only about three weeks left in the legislative session.
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