Should sex work be decriminalized for all consenting adults?

Sex workers became even more vulnerable to abuse from clients after the passage of two bills in 2018, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, and the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (SESTA/FOSTA). SESTA/FOSTA banned many online platforms for sex workers, including client screening services like Redbook, which allowed sex workers to share information about abusive and dangerous customers and build communities to protect themselves. The law also pushed more sex workers offline and into the streets, where they have to work in isolated areas to avoid arrest, and deal with clients without background checks.

The ACLU opposed SESTA/FOSTA for violating sex workers’ rights and restricting freedom of speech on the internet. In 2019, Congress introduced the SAFE SEX Workers Study Act, which would allow further study on the impact of SESTA/FOSTA on sex workers’ safety.

Sex workers often cannot access health care because they risk being arrested if it is revealed that they are a sex worker. Many also forego health care out of fear of mistreatment and discrimination by medical staff.

Criminal law enforcement of sex work comes with unjust police practices, like the use of condoms as evidence of intent to do sex work. As a result, some sex workers and people who are profiled as sex workers may opt not to carry condoms due to the risk of arrest. This puts them at higher risk of contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Decriminalizing sex work would allow sex workers to get the care they need, when they need it.

Members of the LGBTQ community make up a large portion of sex workers and face disparate impacts in criminalized settings. Anti-sex work laws further marginalize members of the community by dramatically decreasing incomes and allowing for discrimination. Trans women of color are the most impacted by criminalization, because police often profile them as sex workers and subject them to harassment.If sex work were decriminalized, police would have one less tool to harass and marginalize members of the LGBTQ community. Sex workers, and especially trans women, would have more agency when it comes to their own bodies and livelihoods. Decriminalizing sex work would promote the message that Black trans lives matter.

The criminalization of sex work feeds the mass incarceration system by putting more people in jail unnecessarily. Those incarcerated for sex work tend to be trans and/or people of color, two groups that are already disproportionately ensnared in our jail and prison systems. One in six trans people have been incarcerated, and one in two trans people of color. Incarcerated trans people are often aggressively misgendered, denied health care, punished for expressing their gender identity, and targeted for sexual violence.

An arrest on charges of sex work can prevent someone from accessing an accurate ID, jobs, housing, health care, and other services. It can also lead to deportation for immigrants. Members of the trans community and sex workers already face discrimination in many of these systems, and a criminal record further marginalizes and stigmatizes being trans or engaging in sex work.

Everyone deserves access to financial services and everyone should be able to make a living and support themselves and their families.

Yet companies like Mastercard and public platforms like PayPal and Venmo, which should offer their services to all users without discrimination, continue to boot sex workers and other users off their platforms with little due process. Bans on certain online content can also get adult websites shut-down and cost sex workers their livelihoods.

These practices amount to financial discrimination, which stigmatizes sex work and endangers the safety of sex workers by pushing the industry deeper into the shadows.