California Sex Trafficking Fight Erupts Over Punishment for Soliciting Minors
It’s rare to see politicians of any stripe fight against sex-trafficking overreach—or any tough-on-crime gestures, really. In California, Democrats have been finding out what happens when you do. After pushing back somewhat against an overly carceral bill targeting prostitution customers, they were tarred by Republicans as having voted “to protect predators” and being “a threat to our kids’ safety.”
It’s become “the biggest controversy Sacramento has seen in a while,” notes The Sacramento Bee.
Now, of course, Democrats are backtracking.
Solicitation Law Changes Proposed
The bill—an amended version of which passed the California Assembly on May 1—originally came from Sacramento Rep. Maggy Krell, herself a Democrat and a former prosecutor. Krell worked on a failed case against Backpage and then wrote a book about it, so being tough on prostitution is basically her whole shtick now. But Assembly Bill 379, introduced in February, is a bad bill.
It would create a new prostitution loitering law—the kind of thing that lets cops target people for merely looking like they might be about to engage in prostitution. And it would institute a mandatory $1,000 “Survivor Support Fund” fine on anyone convicted of solicitation or loitering for solicitation (in addition to any other fines they might get).
But those aren’t the controversial bits—most lawmakers in the state’s Assembly were OK with those parts (alas). The big controversy concerns punishments for soliciting someone aged 16 or 17 for sex.
Krell’s proposal would amend a law passed last year that treats solicitation of a minor differently based on whether a minor being solicited is over or under age 16.
Misdemeanor or Felony?
That 2024 law raised potential penalties for solicitation of a minor, moving it from a misdemeanor to a possible felony. But soliciting a minor for prostitution can only be a felony in cases where the offender is over age 18 and the person solicited is under age 16, or under age 18 and proven to be a victim of human trafficking. And even under such circumstances, authorities still have some discretion. The 2024 law made it a “wobbler” offense, with prosecutors and judges able to charge and punish it as either a misdemeanor or a felony.
Basically, the 2024 law was an acknowledgement that the broad parameters of the crime here—soliciting someone who is under age 18 for sex—don’t tell us everything we need to know about moral culpability. There’s a big difference between a 40-year-old man actively soliciting someone he knows to be 14 years old for sex and a 16-year-old soliciting another 16-year-old, for instance. Or between someone soliciting a minor they know is being coerced into prostitution and a 22-year-old soliciting a 17-year-old whom they might reasonably believe to be 18 and acting independently.
Under Krell’s proposal, any act of solicitation “by a defendant who is 18 years of age or older” could be punished as a felony when the person solicited was a minor (or, as it goes, a cop pretending to be one).
An amended version of the bill that passed the Assembly last week would have done away with Krell’s proposed changes to the way solicitation of a minor is punished. Republicans, along with Krell and a few Democrats, opposed this amended version, but most Democrats in the state Assembly were on board with the change.
“Krell is a former prosecutor, and prosecutors tend to be hammers that see every problem as a nail,” suggested Sacramento Bee op-ed writer Robin Epley, noting that the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California is opposed to the bill as originally written. Under Krell’s version, “a 19- or 20-year-old dating a 16- or 17-year-old” could be charged with a felony for buying a date dinner, since prostitution doesn’t require the exchange of money, just anything of value, Epley pointed out. “I believe it would be used as a cudgel to persecute out-groups—including families that disapprove of queer or interracial relationships.”
“What the Democrats are trying to do here is keep some common sense written into stat
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