In 2019, then-state Rep. David Crowley co-sponsored legislation that would have forced taxpayers to stock free tampons and sanitary napkins in men’s restrooms in Wisconsin’s state and local government buildings and public schools.
Assembly Bill 381, introduced Aug. 28, 2019, by Crowley and a group of legislative Democrats, required that “tampons and sanitary napkins are available in all of the restroom facilities at no charge.” The mandate applied to buildings owned, leased or occupied by the state or any political subdivision, as well as school districts, independent charter schools and private schools in parental choice programs.
The bill’s plain language left no carve-out. “All of the restroom facilities” meant men’s rooms, women’s rooms and any others. Critics called the proposal an obvious waste of public money and a clear signal that left-wing lawmakers like Crowley were more interested in advancing gender ideology than addressing real needs. Biological males do not menstruate. Stocking men’s bathrooms with feminine hygiene products solves a problem that does not exist.
Crowley, a Milwaukee Democrat who later became Milwaukee County executive and is now the Democratic nominee for governor, put his name on the measure as one of its original sponsors. The bill never advanced beyond the Committee on State Affairs and died at the end of the session. Yet the record remains: Crowley supported requiring free menstrual products in men’s restrooms across government buildings and schools.
Supporters sold the idea as “equity” and “access.” Opponents saw it as the kind of performative progressive excess that reveals a politician’s true priorities. For a candidate now casting himself as a moderate who can win over suburban and rural voters, co-sponsoring a bill that treated men’s bathrooms as places that need tampon dispensers undercuts the moderate label.
