U.S. Public Law 92-278 made Father’s Day a permanent national observance. President Richard Nixon signed the law on April 24, 1972, establishing the third Sunday in June as the annual date.
The law completed a long campaign to give Father’s Day official national recognition. Sonora Smart Dodd helped launch the first widely recognized celebration in Spokane, Washington, in 1910. President Calvin Coolidge recommended national observance in 1924, and President Lyndon B. Johnson issued a proclamation in 1966, but neither step created the permanent statutory designation supplied by Public Law 92-278.
A common mix-up is treating the 1966 proclamation as the law that made the holiday permanent. It was an important presidential recognition, but the decisive legislation came six years later. The statute is now reflected in federal law as 36 U.S.C. §109, which designates the third Sunday in June and requests a presidential proclamation encouraging public and private observance.