By Sarah Ladd
Lexington Herald-Leader
(TNS)
A longer version of this story was first published in the Kentucky Lantern.
Arguing that Kentucky is discriminating against women on the basis of sex by taxing period products like tampons and pads, two women are asking a Louisville court to revoke the tax and rule it unconstitutional. They say the tax violates the Kentucky and the United States constitutions.
Filed March 9 in Jefferson Circuit Court, the women say “menstrual products are medical necessities” and “taxing them while exempting comparable products used by men has no rational justification.”
Unlike most states, Kentucky levies a 6% sales tax on the tampons, pads and other products the women, Alex Baldon and Skylar Davis, need to get through the day. For Baldon, who has polycystic ovary syndrome, managing her periods has cost as much as $50 in a month. Her condition causes her to have heavy periods, which require more expensive, higher-capacity products.
“Kentucky has made a deliberate choice to exempt from sales tax the products that people need because of how their bodies work: Medical devices, colostomy supplies and prescription medication, including erectile dysfunction drugs, used almost exclusively by men,” the lawsuit states. “The legislature understood that taxing products needed for biological reasons is wrong, but nonetheless disregarded this biological need of women.
“While a man in Kentucky can buy Viagra tax-free, a woman cannot buy a tampon or menstrual pad without being taxed.”
The tax, the suit says, is “arbitrary and irrational” and violates the Equal Protection Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and the Equal Protection guarantees in the Kentucky Constitution.
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Russell Coleman’s office, named in the suit, said that “we have received the lawsuit and are reviewing it.”
Laura Strausfeld, the founder and executive director of Period Law, said this is the first known lawsuit in Kentucky to challenge what advocates call the “tampon tax.” Kentucky is one of 18 states that still tax period products, according to that organization.
Proponents for ending the tax argue that there is no comparable male product that is taxed.
“You cannot go out into the world without these products,” Strausfeld said. “You literally can’t go anywhere unless you’re going to risk bleeding through your clothes.”
Kentucky exempts many products from its sales tax—ranging from most groceries to machinery used in agriculture and manufacturing.
Eyes to Frankfort
For years, lawmakers in Frankfort have tried to do what Davis and Baldon now ask the court to do. For the last few years, with the exception of 2026, Rep. Lisa Willner, D-Louisville, has filed the legislation.
Willner and Rep. Samara Heavrin, R-Leitchfield, tried unsuccessfully in 2023 to make the products tax exempt. This year, Willner, Kentucky House Majority Whip Jason Nemes and Rep. George Brown Jr., D-Lexington, proposed schools provide free menstrual products if they have children in grades 6 through 12—children around ages 11 to 18.
Most children get their first period between the ages of 10-16, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Willner told the Lantern that a consistent refrain she’s heard in pushing for the bill in the past is: “Well, it’s just not really that big a deal” and “well, it’s not that much money.”
“I counter with, ‘Well, it’s also not that much revenue for the state,’” she said. “So, that argument goes both ways.”
Willner wants to see the lawsuit’s goal succeed—even if that takes the form of the legislature swooping in and de-taxing the products before the end of session, as advocates hope.
“It is a disproportionate tax. It is a tax on women and girls. How can you argue otherwise?” Willner said.
‘Hidden experiences’
Davis was 9 when she got her first period.
“No one in my class had started their period yet, and I felt so alone and just … in a weird spot,” she recalled.
She now runs Period Y’all, which provides period products across the state to people who need them.
Davis, 35, also has premenstrual dysphoric disorder , a chronic condition that gives her migraines and “mental health shifts” the week before her period.
“I think there’s just a lot of hidden experiences that women go through, and it’s not studied enough,” said Davis.
Baldon, 25, was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome at 16 and lives with cysts and heavy periods that last on average nine days a month, but have lasted as long as two weeks.
The Northern Kentucky first-year law student has to choose some months between grocery items and the period products she needs.
“Women deserve to be able to … have access to products that are not taxed, and … as a student, be able to relieve some of that burden off of us while we’re going through school, while we are just trying to just make a way,” she said.
Stigma on the rise
According to the 2025 State of the Period report, stigma around menstruation “surged” in 2023. That report showed 77% of teenagers on average hide their period products on the way to the bathroom, which it calls “shame-induced behavior” that’s even higher for Black students at 83% and low-income students at 82%.
The report, commissioned by PERIOD, a menstrual advocacy organization, and the period and bladder underwear company Thinx, Inc., also showed 3 in 10 teenagers turn to artificial intelligence with their questions about menstruation. And while “moms are teens’ go-to source for period answers,” researchers found, “dads fall at the bottom, trailing even behind AI chatbots.”
Baldon hopes this legal fight will push back against some of that engrained stigma.
“I think that through this lawsuit, and through, hopefully, it being untaxed through the legislation,” she said, “I think that it will make young women feel more confident in themselves.”
Photo credit: Dmytro Skrypnykov/iStock
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©2026 Lexington Herald-Leader. Visit kentucky.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC.
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Tags: Kentucky, menstrual products, Sales Tax, tampons, Taxes
