Calif. eyes stop to ‘loitering for prostitution’ arrests

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – California lawmakers are finally sending to Gov. Gavin Newsom a hot potato of a bill that would bar police from making arrests on a charge of loitering for prostitution, nine months after the measure passed the Legislature, the author of the bill announced Monday.

Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener and other supporters said arrests for loitering with the intent to engage in prostitution often rely on police officers’ perceptions and disproportionately target transgender, Black and Latino people.

Critics see it as a further erosion of criminal penalties that tie the hands of police on quality-of-life issues like shoplifting and car burglaries. Greg Burt, a spokesman for the California Family Council, and other opponents fear it’s part of an eventual effort to decriminalize prostitution.

“This bill seems to be perfect if you want sex trafficking to even increase in California,” he said. “This bill is really going to affect poor neighborhoods – it’s not going to affect neighborhoods where these legislators live.”

The bill would not decriminalize soliciting or engaging in sex work.

It would allow those who were previously convicted or are currently serving loitering sentences to ask a court to dismiss and seal the record of the conviction.

The measure has passed both chambers, but Wiener took the unusual step of stopping the bill from going to Newsom after the Assembly approved the measure in September with no votes to spare. More than two dozen of his fellow Democrats in the Assembly and Senate either voted no or declined to vote.

He wanted time, Wiener said then, “to make the case about why this civil rights bill is good policy ... and why this discriminatory loitering crime goes against California values.”