North Carolina has made it a felony crime to patronize a sex worker. Under a law that took effect December 1, "any person who solicits another for the purpose of prostitution is guilty of a Class I felony for a first offense"—a crime that comes with a presumptive minimum sentence of four months in prison, up to two years.* Second and subsequent offenses are now Class H felonies, punishable by up to 39 months in prison.
"In the past, many first offenses under either classification have received house arrest or probation in lieu of prison time. Prior to this revision, the maximum penalty for purchasing sex from a consenting adult was a misdemeanor," according to Yes Weekly.
Soliciting sex—like selling sex—has typically been categorized by states across the country as a misdemeanor. But in recent years, we've seen a disturbing trend of states starting to classify attempts to pay for sexual activity as a felony.
It's a trend that's bad for not only sex buyers but also, and perhaps especially, for sex workers. And it mirrors the misguided and detrimental path we saw people take with the war on drugs.
Three States Now Make Paying for Sex a Felony
Three states now make it a felony crime to pay for sex or attempt to pay for sex, even on a first offense and in situations where the person being paid is a consenting adult or a cop posting as a consenting adult. (Many states make it a felony to pay or attempt to pay a minor for sex, but that is not what we're talking about today.)
Felony crimes not only tend to come with more harsh prison sentences but other conditions, such as loss of voting rights for some period of time, restrictions on the kinds of jobs one can hold, and restrictions on one's right to own firearms.
"In 2021, Texas became the first state to make buying sex a felony, when Governor Greg Abbott signed a law increasing the maximum penalty to two years in prison for a first offense," notes Yes Weekly. "State Representative Senfronia Thompson (D–Houston), the author of the bill, said 'We know the demand is the driving force behind human sex trafficking. If we can curb or stamp out the demand end of it, then we can save the lives of numerous persons.'"
Last May, Oklahoma made "engaging in prostitution or soliciting, inducing, enticing, or procuring another to commit an act of prostitution" felony crimes.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE)—the conservative group formerly known as Morality in Media that has spent the past decade trying to rebrand itself as a feminist organization—is a major driver of these laws and, more generally, the idea that we can "end demand" for prostitution.
NCOSE tends to focus on salacious stories of people violently forced into prostitution and portray all sex buyers as people complicit in committing "atrocities." The group and its allies make it very hard for politicians or anyone to speak out against harsher penalties for sex buyers, even though the vast majority of sex buying situations look nothing like the horror stories they blast out in support of them.
Punishing Sex Workers
As with so many overly punitive or privacy-invading schemes surrounding sex work, policies like the one taking effect in North Carolina have been sold under the guise of stopping human trafficking—despite targeting anyone involved in paid sexual exchange, even when it's between consenting adults.
Cops, politicians, and antiprostitution activists argue that by targeting anyone who would pay for sex, they're going to "end demand" for all prostitution—thereby also thwarting forced, coerced, and underage prostitution, aka human trafficking or sex trafficking.
This is absurd, of course. We can't eradicate the human sex drive, nor can we ensure that everyone can fulfill it without money changing hands. The state is not going to "end demand" for sex, no matter how hard it tries.
Besides, we know from other types of prohibition that increasingly punitive laws don't have the major deterrent effect that proponents suggest. A certain sort of person will be deterred by something being criminalized at all, but many people willing to risk arrest and punishment aren't likely to be deterred by the fact that they could potentially receive a longer sentence.
What is likely to happen with increased criminalization of prostitution customers is that customers will actually gain more power and more of an upper hand in sex work negotiations. After all, they're the ones incurring more risk (at least in North Carolina and Texas; Oklahoma seems to have ramped up penalties on everyone involved). Undoubtedly, this will make customers less likely to submit to screening methods and perhaps less likely to act in other ways that are beneficial to sex workers.
In the end, sex workers will be the real victims of this policy change.
The vast majority of customers will never be caught and never face increased punishment. But the threat exists for everyone, and the ramifications of this increased threat will reverberate throughout the sex work scene in North Carolina, with potential consequences for anyone involved in selling sex.
Sex workers are also likely to suffer under another part of North Carolina's new prostitution law, which requires hotel staff to be trained on spotting "human trafficking." Again and again, we see these programs simply portray all sex work as human trafficking and encourage employees of airlines, hotels, and all sorts of other businesses to report anyone they think may be engaging in sex work.
Repeating the Drug War's Mistakes
Ramping up penalties for prostitution customers illustrates one of the many ways in which authorities are repeating the mistakes of the war on drugs in their war on sex trafficking.
As the drug war ramped up, we saw ever-escalating penalties: more prison time, more severe charges, more conditions on those convicted, etc.
As the drug war ramped up, we saw a shift from law enforcement focus on major drug suppliers to anyone selling drugs to anyone buying drugs.
The drug war shift to targeting drug buyers was even sold as an "end demand" strategy, with advocates arguing that we could stamp out drug trafficking (the supply side) by going harder after drug users (the demand side).
"Ending the demand for drugs is how, in the end, we will win" the drug war, then-President Ronald Reagan said in 1988.
As the drug war ramped up, we saw more and more desperate attempt to enlist random people and industries on the side of the drug warriors. Campaigns encouraging people—including kids whose parents were drug users—to snitch. Trainings and propaganda aimed at teaching people to recognize the signs of drug use.
We all know now how these things turned out. Yes, we massively ramped up drug arrests, prosecutions, and convictions. We filled our jails and prisons beyond capacity with people found guilty of drug crimes. We devastated many lower-income communities by putting so many people from them behind bars while simultaneously creating incentives for gang activity to thrive. We threw boatloads of money at enforcement, and enabled all sorts of crazy police-state schemes in service of this. We militarized police and poked a million holes in civil liberties.
We did not, however, end demand for drugs. We did not stamp out drug addiction and drug-related gang activity. We most emphatically did not win the drug war.
And we will not end demand for sex, nor stamp out sexual exploitation and sex-related crime, by repeating all of the drug war's mistakes. But states like North Carolina seem intent on trying.
More Sex & Tech News
Idaho's "abortion trafficking" law can mostly take effect. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has reversed a lower court decisions that blocked enforcement of the law. On Monday, "a panel of federal judges…largely upheld Idaho's 'abortion trafficking' law, a measure passed in the 2023 legislative session meant to punish an adult who helps a minor seek an abortion in another state or obtain medication that will induce an abortion," reports the Idaho Capital Sun.
The law bans "recruiting, harboring, or transporting" someone under age 18 for the purpose of helping them obtain an abortion without their parents' knowledge.
Idaho can now "mostly enforce" the law, notes Bloomberg legal reporter Mary Anne Pazanowski. The exception: "a section that prohibits individuals from giving minors truthful, not misleading information about abortion" cannot be enforced.
This "recruiting" prong likely "prohibits a substantial amount of protected expressive speech relative to its plainly legitimate sweep," said the court.
Updates on Age Verification Lawsuits
• The Free Speech Coalition is suing over the "Protect Tennessee Minors Act," which requires web platforms that feature adult content to employ a "reasonable age-verification method."
• Techdirt looks at the groups supporting Texas in its Supreme Court battle to enforce an age verification law.
• "A federal district court has paused proceedings in a legal challenge to Indiana's new age verification law for adult websites, choosing to wait for the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on a similar dispute," reports State Affairs.
Elon Musk should be paying attention to what happens with the Texas and Florida social media laws, suggests Corbin Barthold, internet policy counsel at TechFreedom. "If Elon cared to listen, I'd tell him this: He should start talking, loudly and often, about the threat that Florida's and Texas's social media laws, SB 7072 and HB 20, pose to X," Bartholdi writes. More:
Florida's SB 7072 Texas's HB 20 were enacted in 2021, and they've already been the subject of extensive litigation. They've already been to the Supreme Court, in fact, where, last summer, the justices addressed lawsuits challenging the two laws in Moody v. NetChoice. That decision does some very good things. It confirms that the First Amendment protects curated collections of third-party speech. It finds that social media newsfeeds are exactly that sort of protected expressive compilation. And it concludes that "a state may not interfere" with such feeds "to advance its own vision of ideological balance."
But Moody is not the final word. The justices were reviewing a pair of interlocutory appeals; they were explaining only what was "likely" to happen, in the two cases, on the merits. What's more, the decision addresses only what social media platforms do "on their main feeds." Texas and Florida are "not likely to succeed in enforcing" their laws, the Court declared, "against the platforms' application of their content-moderation policies to the feeds that were the focus of the proceedings below" (emphasis mine). The Court offered no opinion on whether SB 7072 and HB 20 are constitutional as applied to user profiles, direct messaging, group chats, or event functions. Instead, it sent the cases back to their respective trial courts for further fact-finding through discovery.
In a nutshell, SB 7072 and HB 20 require large social media platforms (1) to carry and promote content against their will and (2) to fulfill onerous transparency requirements. Even if the conclusion that they do not govern content moderation on newsfeeds holds (no sure bet—a point to which I shall return), these two laws could cause huge headaches for Musk and X.
Read the whole thing here.
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CORRECTION: This article previously misstated the minimum sentence imposed.
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