TIME TO GO TO JAIL
When Connecticut Criminalized Daylight Saving Time
Daylight Saving Time (DST) is controversial. People debate whether changing clocks twice annually is a good idea, and similarly, they quibble over whether Daylight Saving Time is better than Standard Time. One aspect should be uncontroversial, however: Communities should pick one together and apply it across the board. After all, if the school bus driver thinks it’s 7 a.m. but the principal thinks it’s 8 a.m., that’s a problem. For the sake of everyone’s sanity, when it comes to deciding what time it is, people need to find a way to get along…even if it means putting people who disagree in jail.
The jail part seems a bit extreme, actually, but it’s what the state of Connecticut once thought. In 1922, the state’s legislature—controlled by farmers who wished to have consistent time year-round (and didn’t mind having an earlier sunrise and sunset)—really didn’t like Daylight Saving Time. In response, they did what legislatures do: They passed a law requiring that the entire state remain on Standard Time year-round. The law was ineffective, however, as it didn’t have any penalties associated with it, and a few of the state’s mayors decided to “spring forward” anyway. As Time magazine reported, “the cities used Daylight Saving Time, while the executive and judicial departments of the state and the railroads kept their clocks at Standard Time but moved their schedules an hour ahead.”
The legislators were none too happy about this “illegal activity.” Per Time, one legislator “offered a bill to provide four commissioners at salaries of $10,000 a year [a six-figure job today, adjusted for inflation] to go about the streets, examine the watches of citizens and take those to jail who used Daylight Saving Time.” The rest of his lawmaking colleagues didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to incarcerate those who dared change their watches, so the bill failed. No one became a criminal for adjusting his or her watch—at least, not right away.
A year later, the resolve of the anti-DST crowd proved stronger. In 1923, the state passed a law which, per Time, “[forbid] the ‘willful display in any public building, street, avenue, or public highway of any time-measuring instrument or device, which is calculated or intended to furnish time to the general public, set or running so as to indicate any other than the standard time.” And this law had teeth; a violation meant you were subject to a $100 fine (about $1,400 in 2019)—or up to ten days in prison. Despite this, some people still decided to switch their clocks. As ConnecticutHistory.org recounts, a Hartford jeweler, in a direct affront to the law, “[set] the clock in front of his jewelry store ahead one hour.” His case made its way to the Connecticut Supreme Court, which ruled that the criminal penalties for violating the statute were perfectly constitutional. In Connecticut, observing Daylight Saving Time was truly against the law.
Fortunately, Connecticut changed course in the 1930s, and Daylight Saving Time became okay once again. Today, the entire state changes its clocks twice a year—and does so without risking a prison sentence.