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 state law so that judges and prosecutors aren’t forced to treat every case the same,” Epley said.

Myths, Mudslinging, and Backpedaling

So much for common sense. It seems Democrats are now reversing course, after their pushback received a lot of pushback.

“Democratic leaders in the California Assembly announced on Tuesday that…the proposed felony will be added back into AB 379, backpedaling on moves the two made last week,” KCRA reported. Their one condition is that “the felony will not apply when the adult offender is within three years of the age of the minor.”

Conservatives had been quick to portray Democrats as having a soft spot for predators and of not wanting to protect kids. Democrats think “buying minors for sex…isn’t that bad” in some circumstances, wrote Zachary Faria at the Washington Examiner—as if nothing counts as being condemned and punished unless it’s a felony.

Of course, a misdemeanor offense is still a crime, and it will still net you a criminal record and all sorts of consequences. As it stands, someone convicted of solicitation of a minor aged 16 or 17 can be sent to prison for up to a year and fined up to $10,000. And under the amended version of Krell’s bill, they could also be required to pay an additional $1,000 Survivor Fund fine.

Funnily enough, those supporting Krell’s proposal aren’t actually as tough-on-crime as they’re purporting to be. Supporters of Krell’s version have suggested that it should always be a felony to solicit a minor. But her proposal would have merely made it possible to charge a felony. It would still have left solicitation of a minor—whether the person solicited was over or under age 16—as a wobbler crime capable of being treated as a misdemeanor or a felony.

This isn’t the only misleading way that Krell’s proposal has been portrayed. “We need to say loud and clear that if you’re under 18—a child, a minor—that the person who is buying that person should be charged as a felony,” said Krell. “Sex without consent is rape. The exchange of money doesn’t change that.”

But the crime of solicitation does not require sex or any physical activity at all to take place. It doesn’t even require an actual minor to exist—many, if not most, cases charged involve stings conducted by undercover police pretending to be under age 18. Solicitation is essentially a speech crime, and equating it to rape is false and inflammatory.

An adult who offers a minor money for sex and then engages in sex with them can still be charged with unlawful sexual intercourse, lewd acts on a child, or other sex crimes, regardless of how the solicitation law is written.

So, Krell’s implication that the current solicitation law lets rapists off the hook is unfounded. And unlawful sexual intercourse (a.k.a. statutory rape) in California is also punishable as either a misdemeanor or a felony, depending on the circumstances.

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 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 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.

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Follow-Up on OneTaste Trial

As the OneTaste trial gets underway this week, a member of Congress is reportedly trying to intervene. “The representative has written to new FBI director Kash Patel,” objecting to the way the case was handled by an FBI agent, according to The Daily Mail.

The lead FBI investigator on the case against Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz—former executives at the orgasmic meditation company OneTaste—was Special Agent Elliott McGinnis, who is accused by lawyers for Daedone and Cherwitz of a range of misconduct.

Read more about McGinnis and the case here.

“DailyMail.com has seen a letter to FBI director Patel from a Member of Congress – who is also a member of the House Judiciary Committee and a former law enforcement official – ‘seeking answers’ about the special agent,” the Mail reported. The letter shared by the Mail accuses McGinnis of “a pattern of misconduct” and actions that “represent a fundamental corruption of the investigative process and failure of agent accountability.”

Prosecutors have already had to admit that evidence vetted by the FBI in this case was not authentic, as this newsletter noted in March.

“Most disturbing is the systematic effort to transform Netflix-created content into federal evidence,” it states. “This isn’t just overreach—it’s the deliberate fabrication of a criminal case through entertainment media.”

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More Sex & Tech News

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin just signed into law the Consumer Data Protection Act, which “requires social media companies in the Commonwealth to verify the age of users and limit social media use for kids under the age of 16 to one hour per app per day,” per ABC 13 News. “While it’s unclear how exactly, the apps would block usage after an hour.”

Age verification and STD treatment bills pass the North Carolina House. A measure that passed the North Carolina House of Representatives yesterday “mandates that social media platforms delete accounts operated by users younger than 14 years old,” according to ABC 11 News. “It permits 14- and 15-year-old users to join networks only with expressed parental consent. Websites and phone apps would also be required to implement age verification.”

Another bill passed by the North Carolina House on Tuesday would disallow minors to consent to treatment for sexually transmitted diseases without parental approval, unless the minors are 16 or older and “the disease can be treated with a prescription with a duration of 10 days or less.” The bill would also require parental approval before minors could be treated for alcohol or substance abuse problems or “emotional disturbance.” A similar law is under consideration in Florida and was recently passed by the Florida House.

RIP Skype. The original Zoom shut down for good on Monday. “The decision to scrap Skype, announced in March, caps a remarkable 21-year run for a software that for many embodied the early values of the open internet,” wrote Leo Sands at The Washington Post. “It was mostly free, had a user-friendly interface and made it easier for people to connect across the world. In its heyday, Skype had over 300 million users.”

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