Dr. Anuj Chandra, Medical Director of the Advanced Center for Sleep Disorders and a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) PAC Board of Delegates, called on the U.S. Senate to reject the Sunshine Protection Act (H.R. 139), which passed the House on July 14 by a vote of 308-117.

Dr. Chandra said, "The bill would make daylight saving time the permanent, year-round standard across the country, eliminating the biannual clock change but locking the nation into the wrong direction - permanent evening light at the cost of dangerously dark winter mornings.

"As physicians who study the science of sleep and circadian rhythm, we have spent years bringing the evidence directly to members of Congress, including through AASM PAC outreach to Senators and Representatives across the country.

The biology is not ambiguous. Morning light is what sets and stabilizes the human circadian clock. When you remove it - when you force the sun to rise after 8 or 9 in the morning for months at a time - you are not saving daylight, you are stealing it from the part of the day when the body most needs it, and shifting the harm onto children, commuters, and shift workers who have no say in the matter."

He said AASM, the leading professional society for sleep medicine physicians, "has formally endorsed permanent standard time - not permanent daylight saving time - as the option consistent with human physiology. Under the bill passed by the House this week, government analyses and news reporting indicate that clock time would diverge sharply from solar time in large parts of the country each winter. In Escanaba, Michigan, sunrise would not occur until after 9 a.m. from late November through early February - nearly 11 weeks. In Terre Haute and Vincennes, Indiana, winter sunrises would approach 9:10 a.m. Residents of Indianapolis would not see sunrise until after 9 a.m. around the winter solstice."

"This is not a hypothetical," Dr. Chandra said. "We have run this experiment twice before in American history, and both times the country reversed course for the same reason: dark, dangerous mornings. In 1974, during the oil embargo, Congress made daylight saving time permanent nationwide. Within months, reports of schoolchildren being struck by cars while waiting for buses in pre-dawn darkness - including fatalities in Florida - turned public opinion, and Congress repealed the law before it had even been in effect for a full year. We are proposing to walk down the exact same road a third time, and expecting a different outcome."

Dr. Chandra said the House vote "came over the objections of medical groups and lawmakers representing Midwestern states, where the geographic effects of the time shift on winter sunrise are most severe. He emphasized that AASM's Hill Day advocacy - including direct meetings with members of the Tennessee congressional delegation - has consistently presented the same scientific case: permanent standard time reduces the mismatch between the body's internal clock and the external clock, while permanent daylight saving time widens it."

"Locking the clock is the right instinct - Americans are right to be tired of changing their clocks twice a year," Dr. Chandra said. "But locking it on the wrong setting doesn't fix the problem, it just makes the harm permanent instead of temporary. We are asking the Senate, and ultimately the President, to listen to the physicians who treat sleep disorders every day and choose permanent standard time instead. The evidence, and the history, both point the same direction."

The Sunshine Protection Act now moves to the Senate, where a similar measure passed by unanimous consent in 2022 but was never taken up by the House. Nineteen states have already passed contingent legislation to adopt permanent daylight saving time if Congress authorizes it; AASM has urged state and federal lawmakers to instead pursue permanent standard time.