Following a tense, marathon D.C. Council committee hearing last month that stretched into the early morning hours, a bill that would fully decriminalize sex work in the District will not come before a vote anytime soon.

“There were incredibly sharp divisions about what the path forward would look like,” says Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, who chairs the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety. “It did not seem to be consensus at all, and I don’t hear the support from my colleagues.”

Allen doesn’t believe the bill has the support to make it through committee, as he first said during an appearance on The Kojo Nnamdi Show’s Politics Hour.

The October 17 hearing marked the first time that the D.C. Council formally discussed the Community Safety and Health Amendment Act, which would “remove certain criminal penalties for engaging in sex work in order to promote public health and safety.” It would remain illegal to traffick humans and children, or to coerce people into engaging in sex work.

Decriminalization does not include regulating sex work or creating red light districts—it means that police no longer arrest people for consensually buying or selling sex. The bill is modeled after New Zealand’s law, which fully decriminalized sex work in 2003, rather than the “Nordic Model,” which makes it legal to sell sex but criminalizes “johns,” the people who buy it.

When At-large Councilmember David Grosso reintroduced the bill in 2019, it had double the support that it did when it was first introduced in 2017—this time, At-large Councilmember Anita Bonds and Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau joined Grosso and At-large Councilmember Robert White.

During the 14-hour hearing, Allen had to repeatedly call for order and, at times, recess. “I had two [Advisory Neighborhood] Commissioners shouting at each other, and would not stop. I had to have someone removed because they kept yelling at people who were testifying, sharing their own story,” says Allen. “That’s not normal.”

Grosso spoke to DCist the day after the hearing, and acknowledged the differing opinions in the room. “Some people that were talking about the issue of sex work from their perspective that didn’t comply with the perspective of people in the room who actually have engaged in the practice of sex work, and it didn’t come across as truthful to them,” he said. “As a result, it was contentious.”

Grosso worked with the Sex Worker Advocates Coalition on the bill. Many people who had engaged in sex work, alongside civil liberties groups, public health organizations, and LGBTQ advocates spoke in favor of the legislation. They contended that decriminalization would make sex workers safer, and prevent them from getting criminal records that prevent them from acquiring housing or other employment (they also brought up harmful law enforcement tactics that made sex workers fearful of calling the police.)

On the other side, there were religious groups opposed to the notion of codifying sex work, along with anti-sex-trafficking organizations and survivors, who said that the bill would embolden and make it harder to prosecute sex traffickers. Bradley Myles, CEO of anti-trafficking nonprofit Polaris Project, told DCist after the hearing that “I don’t have enough words in the English language to say how dangerous it would be to pass this bill.”

Tamika Spellman, a lead advocate on behalf of the legislation, says that opponents are conflating issues. “Police are going to do what police always do, which is to investigate criminal activity,” she says. “If they’re not so concerned about policing consenting adult behavior, they can focus more on trafficking of children.”

Allen says that he saw broad consensus at the hearing that “further criminalizing, incurring more criminal consequences for sex work is just not the right way to go.” But the question of whether to decriminalize johns as well was thornier.

The two sides “did not appear to be trying to come together to work on compromise and consensus. And that spells trouble for a piece of legislation,” says Allen.

Spellman says she is not interested in partial measures. “There is going to be no compromise on full decriminalization. That is not on the table,” she says. “There are studies that say the partial decriminalization model does not work —it causes the same harms. Why are we even fighting on this?”

She does want the council to look at other ways to provide services to the most marginalized residents. “I’m a 52 year old black trans women. A lot of my girlfriends I started out with ain’t here no more, and that’s sad,” she says. “We need some real social safety nets in this country.”

Allen says he’s not sure what the timeline would look like moving forward for the decriminalization bill. “When you have a hearing that is that contentious and had that many divisions on stark display, I think it’s helpful to take a step back sometimes and take a break, take a pause, and be able to think about what we heard.”

But Spellman is undeterred. “I’m still encouraged. At this point last year, no one thought we would get a hearing,” she says. “This is just another hurdle we intend on leaping.”

Previously:
At D.C.’s First Hearing On Sex Work Decriminalization, Everyone Said They Were Protecting The Vulnerable
As Prostitution-Related Charges Double In D.C., Lawmakers Are Reintroducing A Sex Work Decriminalization Bill
New Bill Would Decriminalize Sex Work In D.C.