The SAFE SEX Workers Study Act, a Bill Aimed at Ultimately Repealing FOSTA, Is Back
Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) have reintroduced the SAFE SEX Workers Study Act. It aims to study the effects of FOSTA, a 2018 law that targeted online content promoting sex work.
FOSTA—formally known as the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act—weakened Section 230 of federal communications law (the “internet’s First Amendment“) and criminalized the hosting of online ads that facilitate prostitution. Since FOSTA’s passage more than six years ago, entities from sex worker rights groups to academic researchers to the Government Accountability Office have called into question its efficacy. Meanwhile, sex workers and civil liberties groups—including the Woodhull Freedom Foundation and Human Rights Watch—charge FOSTA with promoting censorship and chilling free speech online.
The SAFE SEX Workers Study Act is meant to be a first step toward FOSTA’s ultimate repeal.
I talked to Khanna about the bill the first time it was introduced in 2019. “What [FOSTA] did was draconian,” he said then. “It did not just go after bad actors; it went after sex workers’ livelihood and safety.”
Khanna said he initially wanted to introduce a repeal bill but was worried that it wouldn’t pass. So, instead, he introduced a bill to “get data in terms of what the impact is on sex workers,” in the hopes that hard data could convince others in Congress to support repeal.
“Just like in the war against drugs, that we were able to push back—particularly on marijuana convictions—based on many studies and data, the hope here is that once we have this data, it will convince people that FOSTA/SESTA was an overreach and then we will have a consensus to repeal it,” Khanna told Reason in 2019.
Warren introduced a companion bill in the Senate in early 2020, and both the Khanna and Warren versions were reintroduced in 2022. Khanna’s first attempt got 19 co-sponsors, and his second attempt got 13 co-sponsors. But in both houses in which it was introduced previously, the SAFE SEX Workers Study Act failed to go anywhere.
Now it’s back, introduced in both the House and the Senate on December 17 (which sex workers commemorate as the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers). The Senate version already has three co-sponsors: Sens. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.), Cory Booker (D–N.J.), and Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.). The House version already has seven co-sponsors.
Once again, the bill directs the Department of Health and Human Services to study the impact of FOSTA on sex worker interactions with law enforcement, mental health, working conditions, and more, as well as the way the law curbed access to important tech resources, including social media and banking tools.
It also directs the Department of Justice to investigate how FOSTA impacted human trafficking investigations and prosecutions.
“Woodhull urges members of Congress to t
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