Gov. Tim Walz signed law requiring period products in school bathrooms, not necessarily boys’ rooms

"Tampon Tim."

Allies of former President Donald Trump coined this nickname for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz the same day Vice President Kamala Harris tapped him to be her running mate.

"He’s sick," Fox News host Jesse Watters said on his Aug. 6 show, hours after Harris’ announcement. "Walz forced schools to stock tampons in boys’ bathrooms. Tampons in fourth grade boys’ bathrooms. What a freak. What do boys need tampons for? This guy is not Minnesota nice. He’s Minnesota nuts."

(Internet Archive)

The narrative quickly spread across conservative social media. Fox News host Sean Hannity, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Newsmax host Greg Kelly made similar claims

A Fox News spokesperson pointed PolitiFact to a law requiring schools to provide access to free menstrual products for all students in grades 4 through 12. 

But the claim about schools being "forced" to provide period products in boys’ bathrooms exaggerates the law’s requirements and reveals a lack of understanding of both the law and its practical application.

The Minnesota state Legislature passed the provision in May 2023 as part of a larger education bill that passed 35-32 in the Senate and 70-62 in the House. Walz signed it into law May 24, 2023. 

Democrats, who had a majority in both chambers, championed the bill; one Republican state senator voted in its favor. Students had advocated for the law for years.

We contacted Walz and Minnesota’s Department of Education with questions about the law’s goals, interpretation and implementation. We received no response from Walz, and no specific answers from the Education Department, whose spokesperson reiterated the text of the statute. 

The law, which took effect Jan. 1, requires schools to provide access to menstrual products such as pads, tampons or other similar period products, "in restrooms regularly used by students in grades 4 to 12 according to a plan developed by the school district." 

As adopted, the law does not distinguish by sex or gender. It says the products "must be available to all menstruating students." 

This means transgender boys and nonbinary students — who might menstruate and are permitted to use boys’ restrooms — must also have access to the menstrual products. 

That does not mean menstrual products must be stocked in boys’ restrooms, legal experts told PolitiFact. 

"As written the law does not require products to be put in men’s restrooms," said Lacey Gero, director of government relations at the Alliance for Period Supplies, a nonprofit organization. "The law leaves it up to the local school districts to create a plan for providing products in restrooms, but does not specify which restrooms."

Some states with similar laws specify that period products should be provided only in girls’ restrooms, said Suzanne Herman, a lawyer and legal director at Period Law, a legal group that advocates making menstrual products free. Minnesota does not. 

"It’s more inclusive than other laws, but it certainly doesn’t mandate that they be in all boys’ restrooms," Herman said of Minnesota’s law. 

For example, the law would allow a school administrator who knows there are trans or nonbinary students who only use the boys’ restrooms to provide menstrual products in those bathrooms, she said.

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"But they don’t have to," Herman said. "They could just put (the products) in the unisex ones."

Herman, who has been reviewing states’ laws that require schools to provide menstrual products, said the Minnesota’s law’s wording leads her to believe that, in practice, period products "are probably in all girls’ bathrooms and unisex ones."

Republicans tried to amend the Minnesota law so it would require providing menstrual products only in restrooms regularly used by "female students", but the proposed change failed to win enough support.

When the law passed in May 2023, Minnesota became the 16th state to require that schools provide free menstrual products, said Sarah Howard, vice president of marketing at Aunt Flow, a company committed to ensuring access to period products.

Herman said that these state laws typically start either in fourth or sixth grade, and the states that provide products to students as early as fourth grade help include students who start menstruating at an early age.

Students advocated for free menstrual products to help address "period poverty," MPR News, Minnesota’s public radio station, reported. Period poverty refers to insufficient access to the menstrual products, education and sanitation facilities that would allow people to manage their menstrual health.  

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former teacher, delivers his third State of the State address, March 28, 2021, from his old classroom at Mankato West High School in Mankato, Minn. (Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune via AP)

It’s unclear exactly how many Minnesota public school students grades 4 to 12 are transgender or nonbinary, but by the best available data, the number is small.

A 2022 report by the Williams Institute, a public policy research institute at the UCLA School of Law, found that about 0.94% of Minnesota’s 13-17 age group was trans, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data from 2017 to 2020. And nationally, among adults, 2022 survey data found that from 0.5% to 1.6% of U.S. adults are transgender or nonbinary. Meanwhile, 2023 aggregated data from Gallup found 0.9% of U.S. adults reported that they were transgender. 

Some districts, such as Minneapolis Public Schools, require schools to provide improved bathroom access for transgender and nonbinary students, including more accessible all-gender bathrooms, MinnPost, a local news organization, reported. 

The Minnesota Department of Education said it wasn’t tracking school districts’ implementation of the laws, and we were unable to determine how each district has done this. 

In an Aug. 8 editorial, the Star Tribune reported that a spokesperson for Anoka-Hennepin schools, the state’s largest school district, said free menstrual products aren’t found in male-only bathrooms, but they are provided in nongendered bathrooms, girls’ bathrooms or from health staff.  

Searching the Nexis news database, we found no reports that menstrual products are being provided currently in boys’ restrooms in any Minnesota school district.

Watters said, "Walz forced schools to stock tampons in boys’ bathrooms."

In 2023, Walz signed a law requiring schools provide access to menstrual products in bathrooms regularly used by students in grades 4 to 12, according to a plan school districts will create. 

The law requires "all menstruating students" have access to the products. Legal experts said a school would be compliant if it provided period products only in girls’ bathrooms and unisex or all-gender bathrooms, for example. 

Although conditions could exist under which a school might be required to stock menstrual products in a restroom traditionally used exclusively by boys, we found no reports that schools  were regularly doing so. Surveys show that transgender and nonbinary people make up less than 2% of adults in the U.S. and an analysis of Minnesota transgender youth ages 13-17 put the figure at less than 1%. 

Legal experts said the law, which Watters pointed to as proof of his claim, does not specify that tampons must be provided in boys’ bathrooms.

The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False. 

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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