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Sex Work Should Be Decriminalized
Sex Work Should Be Decriminalized
10-14-16 ACLU of Southern California By Melissa Goodman and Maria Carmen Hinayon The ACLU has long opposed the criminalization of sex work because we believe the Constitution protects the rights of consenting adults to engage in private, consensual sexual activity without fear of criminal penalty. In other words the Constitution protects an adult’s personal decision to engage in intimate, sexual activity with another adult whether the intimacy is built on love, desire or done in exchange for money or other things of value like shelter, food or necessities. At a minimum, restrictions on that right must receive a high level of constitutional scrutiny before they can be allowed to stand. The ACLU and an array of civil rights, legal and social services organizations argue these points in a friend-of-the-court brief filed last week with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is hearing a constitutional challenge to California’s statute that prohibits solicitation and engagement in sex work for both buyers and sellers of sex. Precedent supports our argument. In 2003, the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws as unconstitutional. That ruling was based on three important principles that consenting adults have: * the right to private sexual intimacy * the right to form and make decisions about intimate relationships that are sexual in nature * the right to privately engage in intimate conduct in one’s own bedroom The court recognized “an emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex.” It also said that the “state cannot demean people’s existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime.” We believe all these principles apply to an adult’s personal decision to engage in sexual activity with another adult in exchange for money, shelter, food or necessities. As the sodomy ruling–as well as the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling–make clear, moral disapproval of certain conduct–including sex work–alone cannot justify its criminalization. We hope this brief sends a strong signal to the court that it should apply a high level of constitutional scrutiny to California’s criminal statute penalizing solicitation and sex work and bear in mind the dark history and the current reality of discriminatory enforcement as it considers the case. More generally, courts may start to more deeply examine how laws used to ensnare suspected sex workers are discriminatorily enforced on the ground. As the Supreme Court said when it recently struck down laws banning same-sex couples from marrying, “the nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times.” https://www.aclusocal.org/decriminalize-sex-work/ read Introduction and Section IV of the friend-of-the-court brief filed last week with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Plaintiff: Erotic Services Provider Legal https://www.aclusocal.org/wp-content...ief-100716.pdf Support the ACLU of Southern California Los Angeles phone: 213.977.9500 Orange County phone: 714.450.3962 Legal intake: 213.977.5253 1313 West Eighth Street, Los Angeles, CA 90017 The ACLU of Southern California defends the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights Melissa Goodman is director of the LGBTQ, Gender & Reproductive Justice Project at the ACLU of Southern California Maria Carmen Hinayon is UCLA POP law fellow at the ACLU of Southern California 
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#2
October 17th, 2016
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Quote:
Absolutely.
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#3
October 17th, 2016
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The ACLU is preaching to the monger choir.
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