Do you think a city should have the power to ignore daylight savings time entirely, or should the state have the power to regulate all its cities? Where do you draw the line?
In practice, I imagine if California passed a state amendment fixing themselves to PST, the federal government would either change the law or refuse to enforce it. Opposing such an amendment would be pretty unpopular.
But in theory, the federal government does have power to "fix the Standard of Weights and Measures" nationwide. I see no reason for a court to rule this as being outside federal jurisdiction.
Many border cities observe the timezone of the closest major metro, even if they are supposed to be on the same time as the rest of the state.
West Wendover, NV (for instance) follows Mountain Time to synchronize with nearby Salt Lake City. So far as I know, they never asked for federal permission.
For what its worth, the relationship between cities and their state is very different than the relationship between the states and the federal government. There has historically been a concept referred to as dual-federalism which has evolved into cooperative federalism to describe this relationship. This is in contrast to the creation of cities and towns, which are entirely creatures of the state governments.
That said, I do agree the regulation of DST definitely falls under the weights and measures clause. We can't have Shelbyville continue to operate on metric time, we here in Springfield gave up on that years ago. One might even be able to successfully argue an interstate commerce argument on standardizations of timekeeping.
No. I don't believe that. I believe that states, not the federal government, are the ones allowed to make those decisions according to the Constitution.
However the weights and measures stuff makes sense and is something I completely overlooked.
In practice, I imagine if California passed a state amendment fixing themselves to PST, the federal government would either change the law or refuse to enforce it. Opposing such an amendment would be pretty unpopular.
But in theory, the federal government does have power to "fix the Standard of Weights and Measures" nationwide. I see no reason for a court to rule this as being outside federal jurisdiction.