FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 20, 2022
Sex Workers Join Appeal Court Case To Support 1st Amendment Rights
Sex Worker Activist Group ESPLERP Signs On To Amicus Brief Challenging Constitutionality Of The Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Trafficking Act (FOSTA) On First Amendment Grounds
San Francisco — The Erotic Service Provider Legal Education and Research Project (ESPLERP), a sex worker activist group, has signed on to an amicus brief filed by Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics Rhode Island (COYOTE RI) with the DC Court of Appeals, supporting the Appellants in Woodhull Freedom Foundation v. United States, who argue that the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) violates the First Amendment.
“It’s abundantly clear that FOSTA violates our First Amendment rights,” said Maxine Doogan, President of ESPLERP. “FOSTA has had a substantial chilling effect on protected speech. Sex workers have been censored or kicked off numerous online platforms as a result of FOSTA.”
“FOSTA violates the constitutionally protected and life-saving speech of sex workers and sex trafficking survivors,” said Tara Burns, COYOTE RI’s Research Director. “It has increased sex trafficking and violence against sex workers, and even more so against sex trafficking survivors. It endangers public safety by further alienating people in the sex industry from police and making crimes against sex workers and sex trafficking survivors harder to investigate.”
The brief is based on a COYOTE RI survey of 248 sex workers and sex trafficking survivors that found participants reported a 40% increase in force or coercion within the industry; for trafficking survivors who had been victims of force, fraud, or coercion within the industry already, that number was 64%. Other kinds of violence increased too, with 39% of survey participants and 67% of survivors of force, fraud, or coercion within the industry reporting increased violence. With no place to advertise online, 11% of survey participants turned to street based sex work, which is significantly more dangerous.
Passed in 2018, FOSTA modified Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to allow for prosecution of website operators who host user generated content that facilitates prostitution, broadly equating prostitution and other forms of sex work with sex trafficking. This resulted in an immediate loss of online resources for sex workers, including advertising websites, life-saving blacklist databases (used by sex workers to alert each other of dangerous predators posing as potential clients), and online forums. For example, Desiree Alliance canceled its biennial conference “to advocate for human, labor, and civil rights for all workers in the sex industry” that summer due to fears of prosecution under FOSTA and has not held a conference since.
“FOSTA has had zero impact on sex trafficking,” said Claire Alwyne of ESPLERP. “But a wealth of evidence – from local police anecdotes to a General Accounting Office (GAO) report – makes it clear that FOSTA has made finding and stopping sex trafficking more difficult, while also putting people in the sex trade more at risk.”
Eleven other organizations that advocate for sex workers, transgender, and LGBTQUIA+ signed onto the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls amicus brief.
Sex workers demand decriminalization!
MEDIA CONTACTS
Maxine Doogan
President, ESPLERP
415-265-330two
info(at)esplerp.org
Tara Burns
Research Director, COYOTE RI
907-378-890nine
