Archives for October 2019

Reno, Nev. – Earlier this week, a federal lawsuit filed by anti-brothel proponent Jason Guinasso in February 2019, was dismissed in United States District Court.

The World-Famous Mustang Ranch had filed to intervene in the lawsuit which aimed to criminalize prostitution throughout Nevada, arguing that legal brothels were allowing sex trafficking to flourish throughout the state. The court denied this and other claims and granted the motion to dismiss. Below is a statement from Lance Gilman, a real estate developer and the owner of Mustang Ranch:

“We are extremely pleased that the United States District Court deemed this lawsuit baseless and without merit and, as such, dismissed it.

“However, we are equally frustrated at the persistent and reckless attempts by Mr. Guinasso to ban Nevada’s historic brothel industry through incendiary allegations that are steeped in moral judgement rather than facts and education.  This was a complete waste and misuse of taxpayer dollars and, from the very get go, appears to have been done for political gain rather than the establishment of sound policy.

“Our foremost priority at the Mustang Ranch is the health and safety of the women that work in this industry and the guests that visit our establishment. Sex trafficking is a very serious and personal issue for us and we are firmly committed to being an integral part of the solution to address it.

“It is unfortunate that, rather than work with us to ensure the safety and opportunity of these women, Mr. Guinasso and others have continued to persecute the industry and the women that work in it.

“Likewise, the significant amounts of time and resources that have been wasted on inflammatory lawsuits and desperate ballot initiatives, could of and should have been spent developing solutions to get women off the streets and out of the hands of predators.

“Our invitation to earnestly learn about us and work with us remains open, not just to Mr. Guinasso, but to anyone who is interested to work with us to ensure Nevada’s brothels are run in a safe, responsible and upstanding manner.”

(Chuck Muth) – I’m sure you’re familiar with the term “Midas Touch.”  It refers to someone with the seeming ability to turn everything he or she touches into a success.

But unless you have kids you might not be familiar with the polar-opposite term, “Cheese Touch.”  It comes from the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” movies and refers to someone who touches a piece of moldy, rotten cheese and is forever tainted by it.

Creepy Reno lawyer Jason Guinasso has the Cheese Touch.  Everything he touches seemingly turns into failure.  A brief history…

• Guinasso ran for the Nevada State Assembly in 2016 and was accused of not living in the district he was running for. He lost.
• He then tried to derail the State Assembly candidacy of famed brothel owner Dennis Hof in 2018. But Hof won his Republican primary and went on to win the seat in the general election in a landslide – three weeks after he passed away.

Dennis Hof had the Midas Touch!

• Guinasso also tried to gather enough signatures to put a question on the ballot to ban legal brothels in Nye County last year. He failed.
• He also tried to pass a brothel-ban ballot question in Lyon County last year. The question was crushed by a whopping 80-20 percent.  Epic fail.
• He supported a bill this year to outlaw Nevada’s legal brothels statewide. The bill never even got a hearing, let alone a vote.
• Earlier this year he lost a high-profile lawsuit in which his client was found to have violated the state’s public records law.
• In July he was dumped by Gov. Steve Sisolak as chairman of the Nevada State Public Charter School Authority.
• And this week his federal lawsuit seeking to void Nevada’s legal brothel law was tossed out of U.S District Court, with Judge Miranda Du ruling that Guinasso failed “to establish standing to confer jurisdiction upon this Court.”

Fail, fail and fail again.  Yes, Jason Guinasso has the Cheese Touch!

In response to his lawsuit earlier this year, the State of Nevada absolutely shredded Guinasso’s claims so badly that one has to wonder how he ever received a license to practice law in the first place.

From the motion-to-dismiss, here are the Top 10 reasons why Guinasso’s lawsuit was destined for another Cheese Touch failure…

1.) The state started right off the bat noting that the debate over the “merits of legalized prostitution” should be a policy debate, not a federal court action.

“If Congress desired to criminalize prostitution,” Gregory Zunino wrote on behalf of the Nevada Attorney General’s office, “it could easily do so.  But it has not.”

2.)  Mr. Zunino noted that the federal Mann Act, cited by Guinasso in his lawsuit, prohibits individuals from engaging in prostitution or any other sexual activity “for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense.”

But since no one working in one of Nevada’s legal brothels can be “charged with a criminal offense” for working there – providing they passed their FBI background check and obtained a sheriff’s work card – there can be no violation of the Mann Act.

3.) Mr. Zunino pointed out that the conduct alleged by Guinasso’s clients was already illegal “under both Nevada and federal laws that criminalize sex trafficking” and that Nevada’s law allowing legal brothels does not preempt existing laws in this regard.

“In sum,” Mr. Zunino wrote, “Nevada outlaws the very activity that is the subject of Plaintiff’s amended complaint: sex trafficking.”

4.) The motion to dismiss further noted that Guinasso complained that “Nevada advertises as a sex tourism state.”  However, as Mr. Zunino pointed out, the examples Guinasso himself submitted “consist of advertisements by private entities, which have no nexus to the State.”

5.)  Guinasso also submitted “a number of articles exploring whether there is a connection between legalized prostitution wherever it is practiced and increases in sex trafficking.”

But as Mr. Zunino pointed out…

“Plaintiffs never allege factual allegations demonstrating a nexus between these articles and their allegations against the State. The only relevance these articles could have is to an outright federal ban on legalized prostitution, which Plaintiffs concede is not federal law.”

6.) Mr. Zunino noted that a “motion to dismiss must be granted when a plaintiff (Guinasso’s client) fails to plead a cognizable legal theory, or fails to plead sufficient facts to support such a legal theory” and that the Court “must ignore unsupported conclusions, unwarranted inferences, and sweeping legal conclusions couched as factual allegations.”

The State argued that Guinasso’s lawsuit failed in this regard.

7.) The State continued…

“To seek injunctive relief, a plaintiff must show that he is under threat of suffering ‘injury in fact’ that is concrete and particularized; the threat must be actual and imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical; it must be fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant; and it must be likely that a favorable judicial decision will prevent or redress the injury.”

As such, Mr. Zunino argued…

“Here, none of the Plaintiffs individual allegations meet the requirement that they are realistically threatened with a repetition of the conduct that they allege is the violation of federal law. Charleston, Ms. Delgado-Williams, and Ms. Albright-Byrd all reside in Texas.  Each of the Plaintiffs allege they were victims in the past of sex trafficking, but no Plaintiff alleges that she is realistically threatened with imminent harm as a result of Nevada law.”

He concluded that the Plaintiffs “were not injured by Nevada’s approach to prostitution, nor are their injuries from sex trafficking fairly traceable to Nevada’s laws.”  Further, “Nevada law did not injure Plaintiffs because the traffickers conduct that injured Plaintiffs was illegal in Nevada as well as federal law.”

Judge Du agreed…

“Plaintiffs claim that because of the conduct of Defendants’ unspecified agents and employees they continue to suffer potential unspecified injury to their health and safety. This is entirely too abstract to establish standing.

“At most, Plaintiffs – who all presently reside in Texas – allege that they continue to suffer severe and dehumanizing emotional consequences from being victims of sex-trafficking and contend that they have ‘reasonable expectation’…that they would be subjected to revictimization.

“But ‘The emotional consequences of a prior act simply are not sufficient basis for an injunction absent a real and immediate threat of future injury by the defendant.’ … The Court therefore finds that Plaintiffs fail to demonstrate injury in fact to establish constitutional standing in this case.”

8.)  The state noted that the 11^th Amendment “generally bars the federal courts from entertaining suits brought by a private party against a state” unless the state waives its sovereign immunity.  But, the motion to dismiss advised, “the State of Nevada has not waived that immunity.”

“Accordingly,” the Mr. Zunino wrote, “there is no legal basis upon which Plaintiffs may sue the Governor, much less the state of Nevada, for damages in this Court.”

9.)  Continuing with its argument that Guinasso’s lawsuit against the state was wrong-directed…

“Plaintiffs failed to allege any affirmative conduct by the State that placed them in danger. Plaintiffs allegations pertain to conduct by private individuals, sex traffickers, who violated federal law, and Nevada law, by using force or threats of force to coerce Plaintiffs into prostitution.  Plaintiffs do not allege any affirmative conduct by a state officer with a nexus to any particular instance of sex trafficking alleged by Plaintiffs.”

10.)  In his conclusion, Mr. Zunino wrote…

“People of good intentions can disagree as a policy matter whether prostitution should be criminalized; however, such policy debates are reserved for the legislative chamber rather than the courts. There is no conflict between federal law and Nevada law here because federal law does not criminalize prostitution and both Nevada law and federal law criminalize sex trafficking wherever it occurs in Nevada.  To the extent that there may be tension between Nevada law and federal law, Plaintiffs improperly seek an advisory opinion from this Court and a judicial remedy for a policy dispute properly committed to the legislative branches of government.”

Of course, the reason Mr. Guinasso ran to the Court is that he’s thus far been thwarted at every turn in his efforts to outlaw prostitution through ballot initiatives and legislation.  Hoping for a little judicial activism was his desperate Hail Mary.

And he lost again.  Big time.  Jason Guinasso has the Cheese Touch.

Unfortunately – like his namesake, serial killer Jason Vorhees (“Friday the 13^th”) – Guinasso, the serial loser, will surely be back to continue his nightmarish stalking of Nevada’s working girls in legal brothels – where can get tricks AND treats.

Happy Halloween. 

Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, a limited-government grassroots advocacy organization, and adviser to the Nevada Brothel Association.  His views are his own.

D.C. needs a new approach

The following is Washington, DC Councilmember David Grosso’s opening statement delivered (October 17, 2019) at the Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety hearing on the Community Safety and Health Amendment Act of 2019, which would abandon the District of Columbia’s criminalization approach to sex work in favor of one that focuses on human rights, health, and safety:

Thank you, Councilmember Allen, for convening this hearing today.

“This is a historic occasion as we consider how we as the government and the community should treat commercial sex and, most importantly, how we can better protect the human rights of the people involved.

“Earlier this year, along with Councilmembers Robert White, Brianne Nadeau, and Anita Bonds, I introduced the bill before us today, the Community Safety and Health Amendment Act of 2019.

“Over the past 3 years I developed this legislation in close partnership with the Sex Worker Advocates Coalition, and the bill is in line with recommendations from Amnesty International, the World Health Organization, U.N. AIDS, Human Rights Watch, and numerous other human rights, public health, and anti-trafficking organizations.

“Since coming into office, I have met with and listened to sex workers and other people who trade sexual services for money as well as survivors of human trafficking.

“I met with them because all of my work at the Council is grounded in a human rights and racial equity framework.

“That means looking out for the human rights of the most marginalized communities, including people in the sex trade, and reconsidering policies that perpetuate racism.

“In listening to those most directly affected, I heard how criminalization and stigma cause tremendous harm to people in the sex trade.

“The challenges facing these members of our community are many: I have heard far too many stories of violence, including stabbings, beatings, shootings, rapes, and murder, all because the perpetrators think they can act with impunity against those in the sex trade.

“Worse, we hear of police refusing to help, blaming people in the sex trade for the violence they have suffered. Doctors and other professionals sworn to help instead of mistreating and shaming people. Evictions by landlords and discrimination by shelters and other social service providers.

“Police seize condoms and other safer sex materials, or prosecutors use them as evidence of crime.

“Threats of arrest, of no one believing you because you are just a whore, of being reported to ICE, and more, being used by traffickers and other bad actors to exploit people in the sex trade.

“What I heard and what research has shown is that criminalization of sex for money between consenting adults does not stop these harms from happening.

“Rather, criminalization directly encourages these harms by further marginalizing people, saddling them with criminal records, making them fear the government, and labeling them as criminal and deviant and therefore acceptable targets for violence.

“People in the sex trade and those who work with them are not the only ones who know that the criminalization approach has failed.

“Ask any neighbor in an area where commercial sex happens, and they will tell you that the activity persists, despite police patrols, raids, stings, or marching sex workers across the bridge to Virginia as was done in the ‘80s.

“I often refer to an article from April 28, 2017, in the Washington Post describing the arrests of eight people on prostitution charges at Massachusetts and Twelfth NW.

“The article notes that a similar incident happened in 2014 at the same corner—police arrested 19 people that time. And in 1995, a sergeant was quoted in yet another article in the Post arguing that the latest arrests at the corner had tackled the problem.

“Arresting adults for engaging in consenting sexual acts for money does not stop it from happening and it does not address the other problems that we are concerned about, whether serious ones like violence and exploitation or more trivial but still important ones like condoms on sidewalks.

“It is overdue for D.C. to change how we address commercial sex in our city and seek a new approach that focuses on human rights, health, and safety.

“What is the best approach to achieve those goals? People who trade sex for money tell me that we need to decriminalize consensual sex for money between consenting adults.

“By removing criminal penalties for those in the sex trade, we can bring people out of the shadows, help them live safer and healthier lives, and more easily tackle the complaints we hear from communities about trash or noise.

“Perhaps most importantly, this is about giving people more options, not fewer.

“In New Zealand where this approach has been in place for over a decade, sex workers report feeling safer and better able to assert their rights.

“A report last winter from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that sex workers in criminalized contexts were three times more likely to face physical and sexual violence than those in jurisdictions with less policing.

“The internationally respected medical journal the Lancet estimates that 33 to 45 percent of HIV cases could be prevented by the removal of criminal penalties from commercial sex.

“Contrary to what you may have heard, this bill does not change any of our laws regarding coercion or exploitation, which will continue to be prohibited.

“Nor does it change how criminal penalties are used to combat the trafficking of minors.

“This has been the topic of much debate about the bill. Let me be clear, the bill maintains legal prohibitions on operating a house of prostitution, i.e. a brothel.

“And allow me to clarify another point of content—this bill does not legalize ‘pimping’.

“The use of coercion, force, or fraud by another person to compel someone to engage in commercial sex remains strictly illegal under this proposed legislation.

“To the contrary, by bringing people in the sex trade out of the shadows, we can fully engage them as partners in the fight against human trafficking, as recognized by international anti-trafficking organizations such as La Strada and Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women.

“Removing criminalization means we can work with people in the sex trade to prevent violence and tackle HIV, as groups from the United Nations to law enforcement to public health experts have all noted.

“Finally, because I believe this bill is a first step to improving community health and safety and because it is important to constantly assess the impact of our work on the Council, the bill creates a task force to study the effects of these changes.

“Particularly important to that effort will be recommendations for budget increases. We know that one of the best ways to fight human trafficking and to give people in the sex trade more options is by funding people’s basic needs.

“Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not note the incredible racial disparities in who is criminalized under our current system. Overwhelmingly, people who are African American are arrested and convicted of the offenses that this bill would decriminalize.

“Data from MPD shows that from 2014 to 2017, almost 74% of arrests for commercial sex were of African American people, with about 14% being Latina or Latino.

“Data from the D.C. Sentencing Commission shows that over the last two years, 89% of individuals convicted for prostitution-related offenses were African American. Since 2010, that percentage has been roughly the same, at 87%.

“We also know that the LGBT community, particularly transgender women, is disproportionately affected by the criminalization of commercial sex.

“This legislation is about reducing harm. I know that everyone here today shares that goal. We may have different opinions about the best approach, but let us assume the best intentions of each other.

“Keeping people safe, healthy, and with their human rights respected cuts across whether someone identifies as a sex worker, sex trafficking survivor, or is just doing what they need to do in order to pay the bills.

“We need to dramatically improve life for people in all these circumstances. The bill before us today may not be perfect, but its core tenets represent our best chance for significantly changing things for the better for the communities we all care about.

“Thank you, again, Councilmember Allen for holding this hearing.

“I know that it wasn’t easy, but you took up the challenge of furthering the discussion on this topic, and I’m grateful to you for that. Our city is better for it.

“Finally, thank you to everyone here today to testify. I look forward to the discussion.”