What makes a purchase a necessity? It sounds like an ordinary question, until a state tax code has to answer it.
Food, medicine and medical equipment may qualify for special treatment under sales-tax laws. Menstrual products, however, are still taxed in 18 states, according to Rutgers Law School and the advocacy organization Period Law. The difference is more than a line on a receipt: It reflects a government decision about which routine expenses deserve an exemption.
In an October 8 account of its first year, Rutgers Law’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg Women’s Rights and Gender Justice Clinic described its work with Period Law on a national campaign challenging those taxes. Clinic director Marcy Karin and students traveled to Kentucky to support a lawsuit brought by two women against the state’s 6% sales tax on menstrual products.
The case cleared an important procedural hurdle in August. A Jefferson County Circuit Court judge rejected Kentucky’s effort to dismiss the lawsuit, allowing the plaintiffs’ sex-discrimination challenge to continue. That decision did not invalidate the tax or resolve whether it is unconstitutional; it means the plaintiffs can pursue their arguments in court.
Their argument asks whether a tax on products needed for menstruation unfairly treats people differently on the basis of sex. The state, in seeking dismissal, argued that the plaintiffs had not first pursued available administrative remedies. The judge allowed the broader constitutional challenge to proceed.
New Jersey offers a nearby comparison. Its exemption for tampons, sanitary napkins and similar products took effect December 19, 2008. Rutgers students are therefore helping contest a tax that their own state stopped collecting nearly 18 years ago.
The renewed clinic also has a local mission. Inspired by the women’s-rights litigation clinic Ruth Bader Ginsburg established at Rutgers in the early 1970s, it has worked with New Jersey community groups on menstrual-equity education while pursuing advocacy beyond the state.
Beyond the courtroom, the issue raises a less technical question. A tax exemption is not simply a declaration that one purchase is useful and another is frivolous. It is a policy choice, made within a complicated revenue system, about where to draw a line. Those choices can persist long after the assumptions behind them have changed.
Kentucky’s courts will determine the legal merits of the lawsuit. The broader question is already in public view: If an expense is unavoidable for millions of people, why should whether it is taxed depend on which side of a state line they live on?
Source notes
Rutgers Law School, October 8, 2026 — https://www.law.rutgers.edu/news/rbg-clinic-first-year
Kentucky Lantern, August 21, 2026 — https://kentuckylantern.com/2026/08/21/kentucky-judge-allows-case-arguing-period-product-tax-is-unconstitutional-to-proceed/
New Jersey Treasury, Tax Expenditure Report (2008 effective date) — https://www.nj.gov/treasury/taxation/pdf/taxexpenditurereport2022.pdf
Rutgers Law School, October 8, 2026 — https://www.law.rutgers.edu/news/rbg-clinic-first-year