Council Proposes Creating Huge New Zone Where Sex Workers Aren't Allowed

The bill, which would also re-criminalize "prostitution loitering," would ban sex workers from Aurora Ave. N.

Councilmember Cathy Moore speaks about her legislation on Thursday, with City Attorney Ann Davison in the background

By Erica C. Barnett

As PubliCola previewed yesterday, City Councilmember Cathy Moore introduced legislation on Thursday to reinstate a law banning "prostitution loitering" that was overturned in 2020 by a unanimous vote of the city council, with the support of then-mayor Jenny Durkan.

The legislation also creates a new Stay Out of Prostitution Area zone that encompasses between N. 85th Street and Seattle's northern border at n. 145th, along with the blocks immediately to the east and west of Aurora. Like the Stay Out of Drug Area legislation City Attorney Ann Davison announced this morning, the SOAP law would allow the city to issue trespass orders to people who have been arrested for being a sex worker or buying sex, even if they have not been convicted, and to charge and jail people who are caught inside the off-limits area. 

Like the SODA proposal, Moore's legislation creates a new gross misdemeanor—punishable by up to 364 days in jail and a $5,000 fine—for simply being caught inside the off-limits area which includes many social service agencies, recovery meeting locations, health care providers, and other services—not to mention places of legal employment. Aurora is also a bus corridor used by tens of thousands of people every day.

Under the proposal, which largely mimics the overturned law, a person could be found guilty of prostitution loitering, a misdemeanor, "if he or she remains in a public place and intentionally solicits, induces, entices, or procures another to commit prostitution." The council also repealed a similar law banning "drug loitering."

Moore and other elected officials, including Davison and council public safety committee chair Bob Kettle, said the law would help end gun violence in North Seattle, which Kettle has said is directly tied to "pimps fighting over turf," they did not explain how they had come to this conclusion. Nor did they provide evidence for their claim that pimps and sex workers are targeting children at Cascadia Elementary School, along with middle and high school students.

"We ... need to give police officers additional tools to disrupt this violence, to disrupt the sex trade that's affecting girls as young as 12 years old," Moore said. 

In comments that were remarkably similar to her comments about the proposed new SODA zones, Davison said banning sex workers from Aurora was a way of caring for them. "We will not overlook these women and girls any longer," Davison said. "We will not act like they are invisible and unseen. We will say, 'You are worth it. We care enough to act and to intervene and to disrupt this criminal enterprise of trafficking women and girls.'" 

Prostitution is already illegal, as is buying sex; sex trafficking is a felony.

Moore said her intent was to provide "public safety" to the businesses and residents around Aurora, and to "shut down the track, the historical track that has been Aurora," an area where sex workers have congregated for decades. Prostitution may not go away entirely, but "they will no longer be here, which is the main thing that we're looking for— to create safety for this community." Kettle added that "the result" of the previous council's vote to overturn the anti-loitering law "is what we're seeing on Aurora."

The proposed sex worker no-go zone.

The legislation proposes a no-go zone for sex workers that extends from 85th to Seattle's northern border.[/caption]

Although officials who spoke in favor of the new law on Thursday said they preferred to focus on sex buyers, and to offer services for the "victims of sex trafficking" on Aurora, the new legislation focuses primarily on sex workers and includes no new services to help women and others who want to get out of sex work. It says that "diversion" should be the "preferred alternative" for sex workers caught violating the proposed new laws, but does not specify what the city considers "diversion" or propose new funding for diversion programs. 

Officials focused on the need to target sex buyers with criminal sanctions, such as fines and jail—a strategy the city has tried again and again, without measurable success, justifying it with the argument that sex work is always exploitative. Davison said it might be acceptable to divert men to sex buyer education classes, AKA "john school," on a first offense, "but after that we need you to understand you're contributing to this criminal enterprise continuing and growing, and then aiding to the escalating gun violence that's associated with it."

Davison has repeatedly prosecuted men for soliciting sex on Aurora, and the Seattle Police Department pays overtime for cops to run elaborate sting operations that usually net an arrest or two. According to defense attorneys, most of the men arrested for solicitation on Aurora, like the sex workers themselves, are men of color, and a disproportionate number are immigrants.

The council amended the language of the law against buying sex from "patronizing a prostitute" to "sexual exploitation" in 2015, arguing that anyone engaged in sex work is "being forced to use their bodies in the commerce of prostitution," according to then-council member Bruce Harrell.)

As with the proposed new SODA zones, judges would be able to ban anyone arrested for prostitution from entering the SOAP area even if they are never convicted of a crime—creating a situation in which someone who is found not guilty of misdemeanor prostitution loitering could be charged with a more serious crime for being caught inside the SOAP zone.

The council repealed the laws against prostitution loitering and drug loitering after the Seattle Reentry Workgroup, established to come up with recommendations to help formerly incarcerated people reenter their communities, recommended repealing both laws on the grounds that they disproportionately harm people of color and that involvement in the criminal legal system "exacerbates already unmet needs." Former city attorney Pete Holmes stopped prosecuting prostitution loitering even before the repeal.