California Democrats were called ‘soft’ on sex trafficking. This could make it worse | Opinion
The issue of sex trafficking minors is often treated as a cut-and-dry issue: Soliciting minors for sex is BAD. All caps. We have to protect children. No room for daylight.
But we all know that real life is more complicated than a pat answer. Nothing is wholly black and white. Not every act of sexual solicitation is made through a car window on a dark street, not every payment is money left by the bedside table — and not every sexual act committed by a minor is inherently sex trafficking.
In 2023, Senator Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, authored legislation that made the sex trafficking of a minor a felony — with a potentially longer prison sentence that some Democrats reflexively opposed. But enough of them voted for it anyway under the pressure of looking soft on crime. Grove returned with the issue again last year to make punishments harder for people who buy sex.
Now, Grove is back for a third round, this time to undo the one win that Dems were able to pull out of that mess — carving out an age gradation in punishments for people charged with abusing 16- and 17-year-olds. This time though, Grove’s got a Democrat as lead author: Assemblywoman Maggie Krell, D-Sacramento.
But legislation that affects 40 million Californians can’t be predicated on worst-case scenarios alone. There has to be room for nuance, and too many people need their elected officials to think critically, perhaps now more than ever before.
How minors get solicited
Unfortunately, the Republicans’ argument that anyone who has sex with a person under 18 has to be a felon is really working, thanks to the Democrats’ absolute inability to make a coherent counterargument at any point in time, ever.
So I’ll make it for them: Harming one group to protect another is no kind of solution at all.
Even though they are apparently too timid to say it very loudly, Democrats want there to be room in the law to account for Romeo-and-Juliet-type relationships. Meanwhile, California Republicans have settled on an argument that’s hard to criticize: That their legislation would protect children, and anyone who disagrees with them must be pro-child abuse.
But while Assembly Bill 379 might make it easier for the law to identify abusers, it will make transactional moments on the street even more dangerous for sex workers, queer youth and people of color. This isn’t a carefully-tailored way to go after sex trafficking and protecting its true victims — this is a criminal justice version of using a sledgehammer to tap a pushpin.
So let’s have “the talk” about sex work and solicitation.
How we define sex work
What is solicitation? Legally, it is merely the exchange of words. So what’s considered payment? Would a 16- and 18-year-old going to prom together, the 18-year-old buying the tickets, and the two of them exploring boundaries in the back of the limo then count as solicitation, payment and sexual exploitation of a minor?
What about a gay, 19-year-old college freshman with his first boyfriend, a 17-year-old high school senior — whose parents don’t approve and could use this law to force an end to the relationship?
Making any “solicitation” of a minor an automatic felony will become a hammer for authorities to target out-groups. And this good and valid argument is what the Democrats were trying to argue last summer. But they failed utterly — and ultimately lost to a shouting match instead of a real policy debate.
Grove’s bills, SB 14 and SB 1414
In 2023, Democrats in the California legislature tried to quietly kill Grove’s Senate Bill 14 in committee which would have made it a serious felony to solicit anyone under the age of 18 for sex in return for compensation.
Grove raised holy hell, Democrats found themselves on the wrong side of public opinion and with intervention from Gov. Gavin Newsom and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, the bill came back for a second hearing and was eventually signed into law by Newsom.
Grove, however, said her legislation was subject to what she called “hostile amendments” — namely that, instead of it being an automatic felony to solicit a minor, it was a felony to solicit for children under 15, and could be prosecuted as a felony or a misdemeanor for 16- and 17-year-olds with a penalty up to $10,000 in fines and three years in the county jail.
Grove vowed to bring her legislation back in another form, and she took another swing at it last year, which reignited a lot of the same debate. That bill — confusingly titled SB 1414 — also passed, making anyone over 18 who has sex with a minor register as a sex offender for a decade.
Krell’s bill, AB 379
Assembly Bill 379, authored by Krell and co-sponsored by Grove, would make a felony indictment applicable to any sexual solicitation of a person under 18 years — there’s Grove’s vow, returned.
Sex trafficking is a very real problem in California: 13,079 people (including 1,600 minors) were trafficked for sex in Sacramento County between 2014 and 2020, according to research done by Community Against Sexual Harm, and Krell says that the average age for entry into sex trafficking is around 16 or 17 years old.
The new assemblywoman for Sacramento’s credentials on this are impeachable: She was a deputy attorney general and prosecutor for more than 15 years and served as legal counsel to Planned Parenthood. Notably, she successfully prosecuted the owners of Backpage.com, a notorious website that knowingly received millions of dollars from sex traffickers.
But Krell’s bill is about more than just the age gap between the sex worker and their customer.
AB 379 also seeks to fine purchasers who loiter around “known” streets (also called “tracks” or “blades”) with the intent to purchase up to $1,000. The state would use that money to provide grants to organizations for victims of sex trafficking. Sex workers would be sent to diversion programs on first and second violations.
“What the bill doesn’t do is as important as what it does do,” Krell said. “It doesn’t criminalize sex workers, it doesn’t criminalize survivors and it requires diversion to be offered to any survivor or sex worker who is picked up because of the old prostitution law that’s still on the books.”
But Minouche Kandel, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, is concerned about what a law like this would do.
“When you criminalize the purchase of sex work, you also harm those who sell sex, including those who are trafficked in commercial sex,” Kandel said. “When people who sell sex are in a criminalized environment, it gives them less time or opportunity to take safety precautions or negotiate with people.”
Anti-loitering laws have historically been used by law enforcement and prosecutors against communities of color and queer communities — particularly queer men of color, she said.
Making it a crime to loiter gives law enforcement a blank check to profile, as it hinges on the intent to commit a crime rather than the actual crime. And who determines what streets are “known” for sex work? Is that a judgment call we really want to leave in the hands of law enforcement?
California doesn’t need this law
This issue is about grappling with maintaining age gradation in the law, but it’s also about California further criminalizing sex work and loitering, to the detriment of already much-subjugated communities.
California Penal Code 236 already criminalizes inducing a minor into a commercial sex act, with the possibility of life in prison and/or a fine of up to $500,000. That can jump to 15 years to life if the crime involves violence, coercion, fear or threats.
Why do we now also need to give up the right to stand on the streets? Why are we OK with any solution that would make life harder for communities of color and queer people? Loitering laws don’t work.
And here’s the crux of it all: This legislation would hand too much power to prosecutors to decide what cases involving minors are prosecuted and which are not. It would hand too much power to the police to decide what streets are “known” for sex work and which ones people get to walk freely down. It would have a disproportionate impact on queer youth, interracial couples and transgender people, right at a time when California needs to be strengthening our shields over them.
Finally, it would keep sex work criminalized, when every piece of research we have shows that bringing this industry out of stigma and shadows is best for everyone involved.
There are already organizations that work to keep minors safe from sex traffickers. Let’s focus on funding them. Not through fines to purchasers, which create unstable funding sources, but through serious investment by the state. Because the best way to support people trapped in commercial sex work is through a public health approach; not more policing.
And that’s the argument Democrats should be making.
This story was originally published March 24, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
