SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) — For Maxine Doogan, California’s law against loitering in a public place with the intent to commit prostitution was never just about sex work.
Repealing the law, she said, was about removing a tool that law enforcement had long used to harass people.
When the law was still on the books, “police could and did use it to harass and arrest anyone they wanted to who was walking down the street,” said Doogan, San Francisco-based president of the Erotic Service Providers Legal, Education and Research Project, a sex-worker advocacy group. “That’s been going on for decades.”
For Doogan, the passage of Senate Bill 357 in 2021 was a win. Written by state Senator Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat, the bill removed loitering in a public place with the intent to commit prostitution from the California Penal Code.
Under SB 357, people convicted of the crime could ask a court to dismiss the charge and seal their record. The bill was signed by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom and went into effect on Jan. 1, 2023. The repeal was championed by a variety of civil rights groups, including the California ACLU, which said it would “move California one step closer to acknowledging sex workers as deserving of full dignity and respect.”
Now, little more than a year after SB 357 became law, some lawmakers want the crime back on the books.
Three bills currently before the California State Legislature aim to once again criminalize loitering in a public place with the intent to commit prostitution. Supporters of the bills, including both Republicans and Democrats, say the restriction was a crucial tool for police in their efforts to combat human trafficking.
Doogan is skeptical of these arguments. While lawmakers cite concerns for human-trafficking victims, Doogan said it's madness to believe that police need a discriminatory anti-loitering law to make contact with them.
Instead, she said the old California law gave authorities an easy excuse to violate people’s rights. “It’s not just people in our industry,” she said. “It’s people in the general public who don’t want to be harassed by police.”
Wiener did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The California lawmakers now pushing to recriminalize prostitution loitering include Assemblymember Tri Ta, a Los Angeles Republican, Assemblymember Freddie Rodriguez, a Pomona Democrat, and state Senator Kelly Seyarto, a Murrieta Republican.
While their individual bills differ slightly, all share the same basic goal: reinstating the legal ban on loitering with the intent to commit prostitution.
Rodriguez’s bill, Assembly Bill 2034, would once again make prostitution loitering a misdemeanor in California. It has a hearing date set for March 12 in the Assembly Public Safety Committee. Ta’s bill, Assembly Bill 2646, is similar, though it would only target loiterers within 1,000 feet of a school, park, playground, amusement park or state highway.
Seyarto’s bill, Senate Bill 1219, has been referred to the Senate’s Public Safety Committee. It perhaps goes the furthest, criminalizing not only loiterers but also motorists who try to make contact with them to solicit prostitution.
Under that bill, drivers who try to contact a pedestrian with the intent to solicit prostitution would face a disorderly conduct charge. If convicted, that person could have their license suspended for 30 days. Their vehicle could also be impounded for 30 days on subsequent convictions.
In a statement to Courthouse News, Assemblymember Ta touted his bill as a way to improve quality of life in areas experiencing open prostitution.
“Protecting the quality of life in our communities is one of my top priorities in the Legislature,” Ta said in a statement to Courthouse News. “By targeting areas known to attract crime, my hope is that this bill will lead to safer schools, parks, and streets for everyone in California.”
Rodriguez and Seyarto, meanwhile, both pointed to human trafficking as a reason to reinstate the loitering ban. In a statement, Seyarto claimed that SB 357 worsened the marginalization of trafficked people and made it difficult for police to stop and investigate possible abuse.
“The initial contact between officers and victims is crucial,” Seyarto stated. He stressed that loitering bans help separate trafficking victims from abusers and are a first step in ensuring that “traffickers are prosecuted and held accountable for their crime."
In his own statement to Courthouse News, Rodriguez stressed that his bill would only criminalize loitering by people who exhibit behavior that shows intent to commit prostitution. This would avoid discrimination against people not involved in sex work, he said.
His bill outlines “patterns of behavior” that officers must consider before making an arrest — including whether the suspected prostitute “stops or attempts to stop motor vehicles by hailing the drivers.” Additionally, his bill states that someone’s appearance can’t be the only evidence used to determine if they’re violating the law.
Like Seyarto, Rodriguez said the repeal of California’s loitering ban has left human trafficking victims unable to escape sex work. Without probable cause to stop suspected prostitutes, “officers must use costly, resource-heavy sting operations to make contact with victims,” he said.
Without the ban, “officers can’t separate victims from their sex trafficker or pimp to help them feel safe, to offer diversion resources and to investigate their pimp or trafficking network,” Rodriguez added. “AB 2034 is looking to help law enforcement protect our most vulnerable.”
While lawmakers like Rodriguez say they want to protect trafficking victims, critics like Doogan instead see new bills like AB 2034 as yet another attempt to criminalize and harass marginalized people. In a letter to legislators, she warned the bill would allow law enforcement to harass LGBTQ, Black and Brown people for walking or standing in public.
“The proponents of AB 2034 falsely claim that the repeal of [the loitering law] facilitated forced labor in the sex trade," Doogan writes. "There is absolutely no evidence of that. There is no data to show that those arrested for [loitering] were ever victims of forced labor.”
“Law enforcement do not need reasonable suspicion of prostitution to investigate forced labor in the sex trade,” she added. “Under existing legislation everyone has immunity from arrest for prostitution if a victim or witness to serious crimes like trafficking.”
Still, some law-enforcement officials say the lack of loitering bans has indeed left them unable to intervene when illegal prostitution is clearly occuring. In San Bernardino County, District Attorney Jason Anderson said that even when suspected prostitutes are walking the streets in “next to nothing,” local police can do little about it.
Parents must now drive their children down streets with sex workers in plain sight, Anderson said. He expressed sympathy for suspected prostitutes, saying they were “trapped in a horrible lifestyle” and needed help. He put the blame on Senate Bill 357 for what he described as a rise in open prostitution. “The second the law was passed, this conduct increased.”
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