On today’s episode, I talked with Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University Professors Bridget Crawford and Emily Gold Waldman about the campaign to repeal the tampon tax, and their innovative reason for doing away with sales taxes on tampons, pads, and other feminine hygiene products – the tax on those products is unconstitutional.
That’s not to say that there aren’t policy reasons for repealing the tampon tax. We discuss many reasons in this week’s episode. A few, and I’m sampling from Asm. Cristina Garcia’s AB 31 to give some California-centric examples are:
- “Menstrual products, including tampons, pads, and menstrual cups, are the only gender-specific items in California’s tax laws.”
- “Menstrual products are not luxuries, and, in fact, are necessary health products for menstruating women to participate in society.” and
- “The sales and use tax laws exempt items that are deemed “necessities of life,” such as food and medicine.”
The constitutional argument for repealing the tampon tax essentially boils down to no matter which way you slice it, taxing feminine hygiene products violates equal protection. Professor Waldman does a much better job of explaining how than I ever could, so … just listen to the podcast and hear her explain how the tax violates the U.S. Constitution.
As mentioned in the podcast, you can keep with the campaign to repeal the tampon tax by visiting Period Equity and by following Professor Bridget Crawford and Professor Emily Gold Waldman on Twitter, @profbcrawford, and @egwaldman, respectively. You can also download their paper that we referenced frequently in the episode, The Unconstitutional Tampon Tax, here.
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