Claim Walz ‘forced’ tampons in boys rooms misinterprets law (2024)

"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.

What does this Minnesota law require of schools?

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.

Featured Fact-check

Threads posts

stated on July 14, 2024 in a post

Photo shows Barron Trump on July 13, 2024, at Butler, Pennsylvania, rally.

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

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.

Our ruling

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.

RELATED: Who is Tim Walz? What to know about Kamala Harris’ new running mate

• 

  

  Jesse Watters

  stated on August 6, 2024 in a segment on "Jesse Watters Primetime":

  Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz “forced schools to stock tampons in boys’ bathrooms.”

  

  

• 

  

  Instagram posts

  stated on August 11, 2024 in an Instagram post:

  Craigslist ad shows “every single person” at Kamala Harris’ Arizona rally was paid.

  

  

• 

  

  Donald Trump

  stated on August 11, 2024 in a post on Truth Social:

  Photo of Kamala Harris’ Aug. 7 rally near Detroit was AI-generated and “there was nobody there.” Attendees pictured “didn’t exist.”

  

  

• 

  

  Charlie Kirk

  stated on August 6, 2024 in a Threads post:

  “During Covid, Tim Walz rationed access to monoclonal antibody treatments based on skin color.”

  

  

• 

  

  J.D. Vance

  stated on August 7, 2024 in a news conference:

  Says Tim Walz said he carried weapons in war, but “he has not spent a day in a combat zone.”

  

  

• 

  

  Lindsey Graham

  stated on August 6, 2024 in una publicación en X:

  El gobernador de Minnesota, Tim Walz, firmó una ley dando educación universitaria gratuita “a los inmigrantes ilegales”.

  

  

• 

  

  Donald Trump

  stated on August 8, 2024 in a press conference:

  “I went down in a helicopter with (Willie Brown). We thought maybe this is the end. We were in a helicopter going to a certain location together and there was an emergency landing.”

  

  

• 

  

  Viral image

  stated on August 8, 2024 in a Facebook post:

  Says Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz had his stomach pumped “after overingesting horse sem*n.”

  

  

• 

  

  Viral image

  stated on August 6, 2024 in a Threads post:

  Photo shows former President Donald Trump “asleep at the 2017 NATO summit.”

  

  

• 

  

  Threads posts

  stated on August 2, 2024 in a Threads post:

  “Mike Tyson says he’s willing to box Olympic DUDE with all proceeds to go to a battered women’s charity.”