California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the “Safer Streets for All Act,” a controversial bill that supporters say will “protect the most marginalized in our community,” on July 1. The bill, sponsored by State Senator Scott Weiner, repeals a 1995 section of the California Penal Code that criminalized loitering with the “intent to engage in prostitution.”
In signing the bill, Newsom made it clear that he was not legalizing prostitution. The bill, he explained, “simply revokes provisions of the law that have led to disproportionate harassment of women and transgendered [sic] adults.” He reassured opponents that his administration will be monitoring trends that might have “unintended consequences.”
In addition to signing Senate Bill 357, Newsom wrote a letter to the members of the California Senate. He explained that in addition to repealing the provision of the law related to loitering to commit prostitution, the bill will allow people who have been convicted of loitering to petition the court for resentencing and to have their arrest and conviction records sealed. Loitering had been a misdemeanor that was punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1000 fine.
The Governor also provided statistical support for the repeal, noting Black and Brown women and members of LGBTQ communities “accounted for 56.1%” of all those charged with loitering in Los Angeles from 2017-2019. This figure is especially disturbing since those population groups comprise “less than 10% of the city’s population.”
According to a press release from Weiner’s office, the now-repealed law gave law enforcement the authority to arrest people based only on their subjective observations and beliefs about what people were doing on the streets. Weiner claims the “vague and highly subjective” law resulted in “the disproportionate arrest of transgender Black and Brown women.”
The wording of the California Penal Code section that has been repealed illustrates Weiner’s opinion. It says that in order to prove that a defendant loitered for prostitution, the person must have shown beyond a reasonable doubt that they “delayed or lingered in a public place” without a “lawful purpose for being there” and “with the intent to commit prostitution.”
Or maybe the person was waiting for an Uber.
The bill was supported by the California ACLU as well as several organizations representing LGBTQ and sex worker organizations. However, it was opposed by groups such as the National Center on Sexual Exploitation which feared it would impede efforts to stop sex trafficking. Because of the disagreement about the effect of the repeal, it took nine months for Weiner’s bill to reach Newsom’s desk after it passed both houses of California’s legislature.
Weiner’s press release added the bill “simply eliminates an [sic] loitering offense that leads to harmful treatment of people for simply “appearing” to be a sex worker.” The bill, he said, abolishes the provision of the former criminal law that permitted arrests “based on an officer’s subjective perception of whether a person is ‘acting like’ or ‘looks like’ they intend to engage in sex work.. [which] results in the disproportionate criminalization of trans, Black and Brown women, and perpetuates violence toward sex workers.”
His press release elaborated that the previous bill allowed “a police officer to arrest someone purely based on how they are dressed, whether they’re wearing high heels and certain kinds of make-up, how they’re wearing their hair and the like.”
New York has a similar law and, Weiner notes, there is now a nationwide “movement to end discrimination and violence toward sex workers.” Organizations supporting the repeal of the 1995 law are motivated by what they say are “high rates of police misconduct and violence.” Transgender people, Weiner wrote, “are more than twice as likely to report physical assault by police officers and four times as likely to report sexual assaults by police.”
The repeal is supported by a wide coalition of groups that expressed support of the repeal. Fatima Shabazz of the DecrimSexWorkLA Coalition said SB357 “repeals a Jim Crow law that criminalized Black and trans people in public spaces.”
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