An update on the authoritarian attempt to re-criminalize loitering with intent to commit prostitution…
AB 379, by assemblywoman Maggy Krell (D-Sacramento), is a different (and worse) bill than AB 63 which I posted about previously. Besides re-criminalizing loitering as AB 63 also proposes, AB 379 would also create a new felony crime for adults who “buy (sic) 16 and 17-year-olds for sex”, if they are more than three years old than the teen in question.
As far as I know, the proposed legislation includes no exemptions for ignorance of a person’s age, or for entrapment – so a person could become a felon by unwittingly hiring a sex worker who claimed to be 18, or be lied to by an undercover law enforcement agent claiming to be a minor and seducing them, even if there was no actual minor involved, or (presumably) even if no sex act or actual harm of any kind ever occurred.
Further, AB 379 would add new fines for businesses “complicit in sex trafficking” (whatever authorities exactly think that means, apparently, but based on past government rights violations, might be something like running a dating website, or a motel or something, even having no knowledge of or connection to coercive trafficking), and new $1000 fines for soliciting, money from which would fund "a grant program administered by the California Victim Compensation Board to support community-based organizations led by or guided by survivors of sex trafficking” (read: Anti-prostitution advocacy organizations).
See article with info on this proposed legislation below, along with my previous email message at bottom about AB 63 (which is also still in the hopper), and how to contact legislators.
But AB 379 is the critical one to oppose right now, as it reportedly will go to a vote of the full Assembly in less than a week, on May 15!
Besides the article sent to me by email below, Reason has a good piece on AB 379 here:
https://reason.com/2025/05/07/california-sex-trafficking-fight-erupts-over-punishment-for-soliciting-minors/
California sex trafficking fight erupts over punishment for soliciting minors
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
Chair, Libertarian Party of San Francisco
(415) 573-7997
···
Begin forwarded message:
From: Liberty Lover sexworkernation@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Ab379 in the news-do send whatever you can find so we can keep track of articles.
Date: May 9, 2025 at 12:24:51 PM PDTCalifornia Assembly moves forward with felony proposal for those who buy teens for sex
Updated: 6:32 PM PDT May 7, 2025
Infinite Scroll Enabled
https://www.kcra.com/news-team/21271fb1-6e06-4bcf-8b56-97b158a0e14bAshley Zavala https://www.kcra.com/news-team/21271fb1-6e06-4bcf-8b56-97b158a0e14b
California Capitol Correspondent https://www.kcra.com/news-team/21271fb1-6e06-4bcf-8b56-97b158a0e14b
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — CA Assembly moves forward with felony proposal for those who buy teens for sexLawmakers in the California Assembly moved forward with a proposal that would make it easier for prosecutors to charge a felony against people who buy 16 and 17-year-olds for sex.
The Assembly Appropriations Committee on Wednesday unanimously approved the measure known as AB 379 https://www.kcra.com/article/california-ab-379-sex-trafficking-bill-coalition/64541727, which targets the demand and the consumers of the child sex trafficking trade.
The bill is expected to face a full vote in the Assembly on May 15.“There’s been a lot of feelings and opinions about this in the past week or so, but personally I don’t question anyone’s commitment or intent to keep our children safe,” said the leader of the committee, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland.
The update represents progress for the proposal that has been at the center of political drama at the state Capitol. It has resulted in digital attack ads between both political parties and deep division among Democrats over whether those who buy teens for sex should face harsher consequences.
State law already allows for the felony if the child is under the age of 16, and if 16 and 17-year-olds can prove they are being trafficked.
AB 379 would add a third way for prosecutors to secure a felony based on the age of the offender. If the adult is more than three years older than the minor victim, they would face a felony under the new proposal.
The committee on Wednesday approved the measure before the updated proposal was made publicly available and before many lawmakers had a chance to read the 27-page document outlining the changes.
RELATED | A timeline of the https://www.kcra.com/article/timeline-kcra-3-coverage-child-sex-solicitation-bill/64693498clash at the Capitol over a teen sex solicitation bill https://www.kcra.com/article/timeline-kcra-3-coverage-child-sex-solicitation-bill/64693498
“I’m a skeptical yes,” said Assemblymember Diane Dixon, R-Newport Beach.“My vote is contingent on the fact that you continue to improve this measure and fully protect all children in these horrible situations,” she said to Assemblyman Nick Schultz, D-Burbank, who is now shepherding the bill through the legislature alongside Assemblymember Maggy Krell, D-Sacramento. Krell spent the last two decades investigating human trafficking before being elected to the Assembly.
Aside from the new felony, AB 379 also proposes to make it a crime again in California to loiter with the intent to buy anyone for sex. It also ramps up fines for businesses that are complicit in sex trafficking and creates a fund for trafficking survivors.
Adult sex workers and sex worker advocates showed up to Wednesday’s hearing to oppose the idea because it would give police more power to intervene in prostitution.
“This is a law enforcement approach to sex trafficking and sex work. We need a public health approach, and we urge you to oppose the bill,” said Soma Snakeoil, the founder of the Sidewalk Project.
“This is not about teen dating, it’s not about prostitution,” said Jonathan Raven, a spokesman for the California District Attorneys Association, which supports AB 379.
Raven noted that the crime of soliciting 16 and 17-year-olds for sex is mostly considered a misdemeanor in California.
“The buyers are the source. If we eliminate the buyers, we’re not going to have the crime,” he said. “A misdemeanor these days is like a citation. It’s like a traffic ticket. There’s no accountability. There’s no deterrence.”
If the bill clears the Assembly next week, it will be up to the State Senate to decide whether to send the proposal to the governor’s desk.
Gov. Newsom has signaled he thinks the crime should be a felony https://www.kcra.com/article/california-newsom-push-ab-379-felony-sex-trafficking/64625355. He has not yet commented on the updates to AB 379.
The Senate’s Democratic leaders have not yet commented on the proposal.
State Sen. Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, who originally tried to pass a similar proposal last year, said AB 379 is a step in the right direction.
“It shouldn’t be this hard,” she said in a statement. “But I’m grateful we’re making progress.”
On Thu, May 8, 2025 at 11:57 AM <mistressmax@me.com mailto:mistressmax@me.com> wrote:
California sex trafficking fight erupts over punishment for soliciting minors
Solicitation Law Changes Proposed
The bill—an amended version of which passed https://kmph.com/news/local/assembly-passes-watered-down-version-of-teen-sex-trafficking-bill-ab379 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 https://reason.com/2022/01/20/maggy-krell-repackages-her-bogus-backpage-prosecution-into-a-book/ and then wrote a book about it, so being tough on prostitution is basically her whole shtick now. But Assembly Bill 379 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB379, 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 https://reason.com/2024/07/08/california-democrats-water-down-sex-trafficking-bill-good/ 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 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1414 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 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB379 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.
…
Prostitution Pre-Crime Bit Is Bad, Too
“Sadly, Sacramento seems to have lost the capacity to have a rational legislative conversation about sex trafficking—or just about anything when it comes to criminal justice,” wrote https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/article305763796.html The Sacramento Bee editorial board earlier this week.
The explosive, divisive debate over how solicitation of an older teen should be punished has overshadowed any consideration about the loitering for solicitation proposal in A.B. 379.
California repealed a similar law https://reason.com/2022/07/08/california-police-can-no-longer-arrest-suspected-sex-workers-who-stand-around-in-public/ in 2022, amid concerns that the bill let law enforcement harass certain types of women—poor, black, transgender, etc.—merely for existing in public spaces. The new prostitution loitering law would, of course, recreate these same kinds of harms, only this time it would be used to target alleged sex customers instead of sex workers.
The loitering for solicitation offense has the potential to be a major infringement on due process, since it’s essentially a prostitution pre-crime offense. Police can use it to stalk and arrest anyone they say looked like they were getting ready to solicit sex.
Any prudence Democrats showed by pushing back against parts of Krell’s bill is tempered by their willingness to create a new crime that could be every bit as overreaching and dangerous to civil liberties. To really do the right thing, they should scrap this bill altogether.
Instead, it seems that they’ve decided to cave almost entirely.
“Krell is a former prosecutor, and prosecutors tend to be hammers that see every problem as a nail,” suggested https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/article305591961.html#storylink=cpy 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 state law so that judges and prosecutors aren’t forced to treat every case the same,” Epley said.
On Tue, Apr 29, 2025 at 10:18 PM Starchild <sfdreamer@earthlink.net mailto:sfdreamer@earthlink.net> wrote:
There’s an authoritarian move underfoot to re-criminalize "loitering with intent to commit prostitution”, by reimposing Section 653.22 of the California penal code, which was eliminated several years ago in decriminalization legislation sponsored by state senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and signed by governor Gavin Newsom.
Now another Democrat, Michelle Rodriguez (D-Ontario), has put forward Assembly Bill 63 in an attempt to recriminalize this vague “offense” (how police officers are supposed to read the minds of persons on the street to determine what their “intent” is, has never been truly explained).
Laws against loitering (like laws against nudity) are arguably among the most absurd, senseless, and offensive laws on the books, because they subject people to arrest, criminal records, and possible incarceration and prosecution for literally doing nothing.
Sex work rights advocates posted this 20 minute video clip of the State Assembly Public Safety Committee’s hearing on AB 63 today. It’s worth watching, not only to hear what the proponents and opponents of this particular authoritarian bill are saying, but as a glimpse into how the legislative process in Sacramento typically works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpf84wjvSLg
Each side has a parade of people present to testify, many of them employees of government agencies, most probably there on the taxpayers’ dime. Even many of those not directly employed by government, work for non-profits that are probably receiving taxpayer funding, and again are likely being paid to be there.
This is not to denigrate the staffers at Public Defenders offices, representatives of the ACLU, workers with sex work rights non-profits, and others who took the time to show up and speak against AB 63. We should appreciate them being there and speaking out against the expansion of government at the expense of civil liberties – if they are being paid in part with your stolen money, such harm reduction efforts are certainly among the least objectionable uses of taxpayer funds.
Nevertheless, it is telling and notable that of the dozens who testified today, not one appeared to be simply a member of the general public, unconnected to any organization with an institutional interest in the matter. This is sadly typical, and a recurring feature of Big Government statism – few ordinary people have the time, resources, etc., to follow and weigh in on all the endless crap being generated in the governmental chambers of Sacramento, Washington, or even locally here in San Francisco.
All the more reason why it does help to speak out as an ordinary person against bad bills like AB 63. Fewer people do so in a state of ~39 million residents than you might think. This bill was not passed out of the Public Safety Committee, but is on a 2-year track and will be taken up by the committee again, probably later this year following a committee hearing in Assemblymember Rodriguez’s district.
Here are the email addresses of some of the staffers for members of the committee. I encourage you to take a minute to write to them (probably most effective to copy and past what you write into a separate email for each recipient, and not list your location unless you happen to live in their district), and let them know you oppose people being criminalized for doing nothing, and OPPOSE AB 63:
Chair Asm. Nick Schultz
Ilan.Zur@asm.ca.gov mailto:Ilan.Zur@asm.ca.gov, jim.metropulos@asm.ca.gov mailto:jim.metropulos@asm.ca.gov
Asm. Mark Gonzalez
vincent.huynh@asm.ca.gov mailto:vincent.huynh@asm.ca.gov
Asm. Matt Haney*
Doonya.Mahmoud@asm.ca.gov mailto:Doonya.Mahmoud@asm.ca.gov
Asm. John Harabedian
Alicia.Hatfield@asm.ca.gov mailto:Alicia.Hatfield@asm.ca.gov
Asm. Stephanie Nguyen
Idriss.Mezzour@asm.ca.gov mailto:Idriss.Mezzour@asm.ca.gov
Asm. Dr. LaShae Sharp-Collins
taylor.valmores@asm.ca.gov mailto:taylor.valmores@asm.ca.gov*Represents District 17, encompassing eastern San Francisco (see District Map | Official Website - Assemblymember Matt Haney Representing the 17th California Assembly District)
If you want some talking points for your letter, or just dare to see a bit of how the sausage gets made, here again is the link to the short video clip from today’s hearing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpf84wjvSLg
California Ass Public Safety hearing on AB63 4/29/2025 AB
youtube.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpf84wjvSLg
California Ass Public Safety hearing on AB63 4/29/2025 AB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpf84wjvSLg
youtube.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpf84wjvSLgIf a phone call is more your style than a written letter, you can call and leave a message for members of the Public Safety Committee urging a NO vote on AB 63 by calling (916) 319-3744.
Or if you want to go the extra mile for liberty, you can find the contact information (phone and email addresses) for all members of the State Assembly, and look up your representative, here – Members | California State Assembly.
Hopefully this anti-libertarian garbage will die in committee, but in case it doesn’t, and just to communicate how the public feels about their resources being wasted on this kind of nonsense fueling mass incarceration and the destruction of civil liberties, it doesn’t hurt to let “your” representative know how you feel about AB 63 even if they aren’t on the committee themselves.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
Chair, Libertarian Party of San Francisco
(415) 573-7997P.S. – You can also read this message on the Libertarian Party of San Francisco website, LPSF.org http://lpsf.org/.
