Could prostitution be fully decriminalized in California?

Earlier this year, ESPLERP (Erotic Service Providers Legal, Education and Research Project) filed suit in San Francisco District Court claiming that the state's prostitution laws were unconstitutional. The District Court rightly rejected ESPLERP's claims. Now ESPLERP is appealing the decision. Savanah Lawrence, NCOSE's Legal Fellow, shares about the amicus brief NCOSE submitted to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of ESPLERP v. Gascón, urging the court to recognize the harms of prostitution. Because prostitution is inherently dehumanizing and harmful it is vital for the Ninth Circuit to uphold the lower court's decision. Studies characterize the violence that animates prostitution as brutal, extreme, common, stunning, normative, and ever-present. Indeed, physical and sexual violence across prostitution types is pervasive, whether one is prostituting in Chennai or Chicago, indoors or outdoors, for drugs or to pay the rent, on a street corner, in a car, back alley, brothel, massage parlor, or strip club. Both the threat of, as well as actual physical and sexual violence, permeate prostitution. Most of this violence is perpetrated by sex buyers and pimps. Decriminalizing prostitution does not change this reality—it assents to it. CALL TO ACTION: Learn more about the harms of prostitution here: http://endsexualexploitation.org/prostitution Free download booklet on violence in prostitution: http://bit.ly/2h04qb9