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- If anyone comes out of this looking good, it’s Assemblymember Maggy Krell (D-Sacramento), who proved herself to be willing to fight even her own party leaders.
- There has long been contention about how sex-trafficking laws regarding older teens, those 16 and 17 and still underage, should be written and enforced.
SACRAMENTO — Are California Democrats weak when it comes to protecting minors from sex trafficking?
It’s a question that has caused chaos in the state Capitol for more than a week. But really, it’s a question Republicans have been asking — and answering with a resounding yes — for years.
At the risk of stating the obvious, I’ll let you know that California has some of the toughest laws against sex trafficking in the country, including protecting minors. But there’s long been contention about how laws regarding older teens, those 16 and 17 and still underage, should be written and enforced. I’ll explain why in a minute.
It’s also obvious that teenagers shouldn’t be bought and sold for sex. That makes the issue a perennial winner for Republicans, who regularly put up bills to toughen penalties on sex crimes, have them shot down by Democrats, then wage media campaigns that result in headlines such as the recent “Top California Democrats Fight To Protect Purchasing Sex With Kids.”
Nuance about why some Democrats keep voting down harsher penalties is easily lost and hard to explain when politicians discuss sex trafficking. And Democrats have inflicted this same wound on themselves so many times by following this Republican playbook that the blood won’t wash off.
The most recent manifestation of this long-running drama has a twist — a freshman Democrat in the Assembly wrote the bill that this year turned into the Republican weapon.
Sex workers say a loitering law that targets them for their hangouts and appearance is discriminatory, especially for transgender and Black people.
Maggy Krell (D-Sacramento), a former state prosecutor specializing in human trafficking, wrote legislation a few weeks ago meant to close a loophole in a previous law that treated the crime of soliciting a minor for sex differently depending on the age of the minor.
A person attempting to purchase sex from a child 15 and under, by current law, is likely committing a felony. But someone attempting to buy sex from a 16- or 17-year-old is committing a crime that’s a “wobbler,” chargeable as either a felony or misdemeanor on the first offense, at the prosecutor’s discretion — but requiring the minor to prove they are being trafficked for the higher offense.
As they have done in past years when Republicans floated the idea, Krell’s Democratic colleagues demanded the felony part of her legislation be dropped. Krell eventually agreed, a compromise to keep other parts of the bill alive, including a provision to make it illegal to loiter with the intent to buy sex.
But then she backed Republicans when they made a fuss about it last week on the floor of the Assembly, effectively going against her own party.
Chaos erupted, followed by insanity.
Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) stripped Krell’s name off the bill and gave it instead to Assemblymember Nick Schultz (D-Burbank), also a former prosecutor, and Assemblymember Stephanie Nguyen (D-Elk Grove). Republicans had a field day with press releases, speeches and even began running social media ads accusing Democrats of being soft on sex crimes. Bizarrely, Democrats then began running the same kind of ads against Republicans.
Then, on Tuesday, Rivas and Schultz announced a detente with Krell. Buying sex from a 16- or 17-year-old goes back into the bill as a felony — if the buyer is more than three years older than the person being trafficked, and whether or not the minor can prove they are being trafficked.
A committee heard the new bill on Wednesday, with Krell’s name back on it, and it’s now moving forward in the Legislature. There’s both a political takeaway and a policy takeaway from all of this.
The reason some Democrats say they have blocked the automatic felony in the past is hard to follow. Basically, their argument goes, an 18-year-old could buy Taco Bell or a vape for a younger friend, and that could be considered a felony solicitation if sexual acts ensued. Frankly, I have trouble thinking prosecutors would file these charges, but you never know.
The issue that really underlies this perennial fight and which Democrats seem to have a harder time talking about is a philosophical one. Some folks on the progressive end of criminal justice reform, including some survivors of sex trafficking, believe the best way to combat the abuse is to decriminalize sex work, or even legalize it.
Decriminalization basically means not enforcing many of the laws currently on the books that lead to sex workers and buyers being arrested — like those laws regarding solicitation. It’s not a push to stop arresting those who coerce or force people into trafficking situations.
The idea is that many sex workers, including younger adults and those in the LGBTQ+ community, are sex workers by choice or necessity, and that saddling them with long criminal records preventing them from getting jobs or housing isn’t helpful or fair, and going after buyers simply makes their work more dangerous.
Soma Snakeoil, the co-founder and executive director of the Sidewalk Project, an organization that does anti-trafficking and harm reduction work, testified at Wednesday’s hearing about that concern.
“We don’t want to hear about survivor safety with hyper-criminalization bills,” she told lawmakers. “This is a law enforcement approach to sex trafficking and to sex work. We need a public health approach.”
She added that if we don’t like the “dirty, ugly truth” that some teens are forced to engage in sex work to survive, especially vulnerable groups such as foster youth, we need to do more to provide housing and options for them.
That outlook goes hand in hand with the years-long push by Democrats to address the over-incarceration of Black and brown people, which has led to the Legislature rarely adding new felonies to the penal code.
You can agree or disagree with those viewpoints, but they are worth debating. Our current political mood, with Proposition 36 (which increased some penalties for drug crimes) passed by voters and Trump in the White House, has dramatically shifted though.
Sex trafficking is at the center of that shift.
Remember when QAnon spread conspiracies about international human smuggling rings, including that online retailer Wayfair was at the heart of a scheme to sell kids through furniture listings? That kind of panic about sex trafficking has become mainstreamed on the right, though the truth is most trafficked kids are sold by someone they know — a parent, a boyfriend, maybe even by another young person being trafficked themselves.
California Democrats announced a deal Monday on a turbulent bill that would make soliciting an older teen a felony for people several years older than they are.
But tough on crime is back in fashion, and no politician wants to champion decriminalization. I think decriminalization has a lot of pitfalls, but if some Democrats believe it’s the solution, it’s a policy failure to not talk about it — and it leads voters to misunderstand their position as weak on sex offenders when it’s really, as Schultz, the new author of the bill put it Wednesday, an “all-of-the-above approach” that seeks to combine penalties with greater supports to keep vulnerable young teens off the streets.
“I don’t disagree with anything they’ve said today on investing in people on the front end,” Schulz told colleagues of comments from Snakeoil and other opponents of the bill.
Krell, who has dedicated her professional life to stopping sex traffickers, strongly believes that buyers need to face more consequences, and she has a point. We can lock up as many sex traffickers as we can find, but as long as buyers feel safe, there will always be a demand. This bill, she told me, is about punishing “creeps” who prey on kids, whether a pimp is involved or not.
It was a political failure of the Democratic leadership to think Krell would be quietly rolled on this issue. Krell is the rare politician who means what she says and says what she means. It likely stung when her name was removed from the bill, but it only increased her will to fight for a change in law she believes in.
If anyone comes out of this looking good, it’s Krell, who proved herself to be willing to fight even her own party leaders. With the three-year age gap compromise, though, Democrats now have a united front and can point to the bill as a success for all involved.
But don’t be surprised if Republicans run the play again next year.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
- Maggy Krell and supporters argue that increasing felony penalties for soliciting 16- and 17-year-olds is critical to deter buyers and protect teens, emphasizing prosecutors’ need for stronger legal tools to target exploitative adults[1][4].
- Democratic leadership compromised by adding a three-year age gap exemption, allowing felony charges only if the accused is more than three years older than the victim, balancing stricter penalties with protections for age-proximate relationships[1][4].
- The bill’s revival is framed as a strategic victory, uniting Democrats and countering Republican critiques while maintaining alignment with broader criminal justice reform goals, such as reducing over-incarceration[4].
Different views on the topic
- Progressive Democrats opposed automatic felony charges, fearing they could criminalize consensual interactions between minors and young adults close in age, which led to the inclusion of the three-year exemption to prevent over-policing[1][4].
- Critics, including some survivors and advocates, argue that punitive measures fail to address systemic drivers of trafficking, such as poverty and lack of support services, and advocate for decriminalization to reduce harm to sex workers and marginalized communities[3].
- Opponents contend the three-year loophole risks undermining the bill’s effectiveness by allowing offenders slightly older than victims to avoid felony charges, potentially weakening deterrence against trafficking[1][2].
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