Chuck Muth

(Chuck Muth) – In 1971 the Nevada Legislature passed legislation allowing the operation of legal brothels in any county other than those with populations over 700,000 – which means, Clark County.

On March 13, 2019 Assemblywoman Lesley Cohen (D-Clark) introduced an Assembly Concurrent Resolution (ACR6) calling for the creation of “an interim committee to study the working conditions at licensed brothels.”

ACR6 specifically stipulates that the Nevada Legislature “has an inherent interest in the health, safety and general welfare of all workers in the State, including sex workers in licensed brothels.”

At a committee hearing on ACR6 conducted in Carson City on March 28, 2019, the Nevada Brothel Association voiced general support for the study but called for amendments to the bill to expand the examination to ALL commercial sex workers, not just those in the licensed brothels.

Indeed, if the Legislature has an inherent interest in the health, safety and general welfare of ALL workers in the State – particularly as it relates to protecting the public from communicable diseases – that should, by definition, include commercial sex work in both licensed brothels AND the currently-unlawful and unregulated sex market, especially in Clark County.

With this in mind, I suggest that ACR6 be amended along the following lines…

WHEREAS, the Nevada Legislature has not undertaken a comprehensive study of the commercial sex industry in the 48 years since legal brothels were authorized in 1971, and

WHEREAS, there has never been a single case of AIDS/HIV or other sexually transmitted disease traced back to a Nevada legal brothel thanks to required health exams and mandatory condom use, which is not the case in the current unlawful and unregulated commercial sex market, and

WHEREAS, commercial sex workers in Nevada’s legal brothels are subjected to an FBI background check, fingerprinting and the issuance of a work card from the local sheriff’s office, which is not the case in the current unlawful and unregulated commercial sex market, and

WHEREAS, legal brothel operations are subject to inspection by law enforcement officials and government regulators at any time for any reason and without notice, which is not the case in the current unlawful and unregulated commercial sex market, and

WHEREAS, due to the illegality of commercial sex work in most Nevada counties, commercial sex workers there have no recourse in seeking aid from law enforcement when physically abused and/or forced into the business against their will, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, that a special study commission be created by the Nevada Legislature consisting of thirteen (13) members, including…

• • Two (2) members of the State Assembly and two (2) members of the State Senate, one of each who must represent counties in which licensed brothels are operating at the time of passage.
  • The Director of the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services, the Director of the Nevada Department of Business and Industry, and the Nevada Attorney General, or their designees.
  • Two (2) individuals who have engaged in commercial sex work; one representing commercial sex workers in licensed brothels and one representing commercial sex workers in the presently-illegal market.
  • One (1) representative of organizations focused on improving public health and supporting survivors of violence and sexual assault.
  • One (1) representative of Nevada’s currently-operating licensed brothels.
  • One (1) researcher of Nevada’s commercial sex industry from the University of Nevada Reno (UNR) and one (1) researcher of Nevada’s commercial sex industry from the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV), and be it further

RESOLVED, that the study must include, without limitation, an examination of:

• • The health, safety and general welfare of all individuals engaged in commercial sex work in Nevada;
  • The impact of revising Nevada law as it relates to consensual commercial sex work in counties with populations greater than 700,000;
  • Advertising restrictions currently in place on legal brothels.

The Nevada Legislature does, indeed, have an inherent interest in the health, safety and general welfare of all workers in the state, including ALL workers in the commercial sex industry.

The Legislature also has an inherent interest in the health, safety and general welfare of those adults consensually choosing to engage commercial sex services – including the millions of tourists who visit our state – to protect the public from communicable diseases.

Nevada’s licensed and highly-regulated brothels are a success story, and have been for 48 years.  They protect the public’s health as well as the safety of those who work there.

As such, if Nevada taxpayers are to fund a study of Nevada’s legal brothels, the scope of said study should be expanded as outlined in the above-mentioned amendment to do the job correctly, fully and responsibly.

Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, a limited-government grassroots advocacy organization, and government affairs counsel to the Nevada Brothel Association

(Chuck Muth) – Nevada has a well-known reputation for often being at the top of an awful lot of “bad” lists.

Well, here we go again.

According to an article in this morning’s Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has determined that “Nevada leads the nation in…the rate of syphilis,” a potentially life-threatening sexually transmitted disease (STD).

“In Clark County,” the paper reports, “there were 1,006 reported cases of syphilis last year, a 153 percent increase from 2013.”

“This is totally unacceptable,” declared Dr. Joe Iser, the Southern Nevada Health District’s chief health officer, noting the disease is absolutely preventable.  “We should not receive one report of congenital syphilis.”

“Clark County has had comparatively high STD rates in recent years,” the RJ report continued, “leading the nation in primary and secondary syphilis in 2014.”

Individuals having sex with unfamiliar partners should use condoms, Marlo Tonge, office manager for the health district’s Office of Epidemiology and Disease Surveillance, told the RJ, noting that anyone who thinks they may have been exposed should “Go get tested.”

Now, here’s the thing…

Since commercial sex work was legalized in certain rural Nevada counties way back in 1971, not a single case of AIDS/HIV or other sexually transmitted disease, including syphilis, has been traced back to a legal Nevada brothel where the women are tested EVERY WEEK.

On the other hand, legal brothels continue to be banned in Clark County despite the fact that “Communicable diseases like syphilis are often brought to Las Vegas by tourists” – the engine driving the state’s economy.

“Condoms are required for sex in the state’s brothels,” Dr. Iser told the RJ, “but there’s no way to regulate unprotected sex among illicit sex workers.”

Exactly.

Fortunately, a bill to ban Nevada’s legal rural brothels has been killed in the Legislature this session, though there’s still a longshot possibility it could be brought back from the dead before the session ends.

On the other hand, a bill to create an interim legislative study committee (ACR6) to look into the business operations of Nevada’s legal brothels continues to work its way through the process.

Unfortunately, the proposed study does not include looking at the currently ILLEGAL commercial sex industry in Clark County where the serious problem of sexually transmitted diseases is so prevalent.

If the Legislature is going to spend time and tax dollars to do a study of commercial sex work and workers, it ought to do it right and look at the ENTIRE market, not just Nevada’s highly-successful and proven-safe legal brothels.

Then maybe we can get ourselves off at least one “bad” list. 

Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, a limited-government grassroots advocacy organization, and government affairs counsel to the Nevada Brothel Association

(Chuck Muth) – As per the Nevada Legislature’s Standing Rule #14.3.1, Republican State Sen. Joe Hardy’s bill (SB413) to ban Nevada’s legal brothels statewide died on Friday after it failed to get a committee hearing by the midnight deadline.

Cause for optimism, but not celebration…yet.  As Yogi Berra famously put it, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

And as longtime watchers of the Legislature know, “dead” bills can become “zombie” bills that come back to life as amendments to other bills right up until the time the Legislature officially comes to an end (“sine die”) several weeks from now.

The Associated Press reported this weekend that Hardy “had argued brothels had no place in the state” while “Brothel backers argue a ban would hurt struggling rural economies and push sex workers into dangerous street prostitution.”

Brothel supporters have won the argument…for now.  But we’ll remain vigilant and let you know if SB413 somehow joins the walking dead.

In the meantime, Assemblywoman Lesley Cohen’s bill (ACR6) to create a legislative study committee to look into the business operations of Nevada’s legal brothels successfully made it out of committee before the deadline and has moved into the next round – a vote on the floor of the state Assembly.

The bill itself doesn’t specifically outline exactly what Ms. Cohen wishes to study; however, in testimony during a hearing on ACR6 last month, the assemblywoman did reference, generally, certain business practices as outlined in a new book titled “Sex and Stigma” by a trio of UNR researchers.

So I picked up a copy and read it on the Lido Deck during my organization’s annual Mexican Riviera cruise last week.  And I think I now see where the assemblywoman is going.

The researchers note that some legally questionable “police rules” exist in some localities where brothels are legally allowed to operate.  And before commercial sex workers are issued a work permit, they are required to sign a document agreeing to follow a list of various “regulations for prostitutes.”

The authors cite, as an example, Rule #6 for the town of Carlin that only allows the ladies from the brothels “to dine in restaurants and to conduct personal business and shopping in Carlin between the hours of 7:00 am and 7:00 pm.”

The rule goes on to say that “Prostitutes shall not be absent from their place of employment between 7:00 pm and 7:00 am.”

These government-mandated restrictions are what those in the industry call “lockdown” rules.

Examples of other highly-questionable rules outlined in other regulations in other areas include…

“(L)ocal working women  are not allowed to go home at night; legal prostitutes are not allowed in town, bars, or casinos; legal prostitutes may not have family members reside in town; legal prostitutes must take days off in a different town; and, if traveling to another destination, legal prostitutes on vacation must take the most ‘expeditious transport’ out of town.”

Not exactly the definition of “freedom.”

The researchers also note that Nye County and the City of Elko “both mandate that any prostitute who leaves the premises for longer than twenty-four hours must undergo all medical testing before being allowed to work again.”

That government-imposed restriction is, indeed, a head-scratcher.

If a working girl is off the premises for 23 hours and 59 minutes…no problem.  But if she’s off property for one minute longer THAT somehow poses a public health risk?  How?  Especially since condom use is mandatory in all interactions.

Anyway, I’d venture to guess that such government-mandated restrictions on legal commercial sex workers working in a legal business that don’t apply to any other legal workers in any other legal businesses are understandably what have caught Assemblywoman Cohen’s attention.

However…

It seems to me that concerns over certain local and/or county rules and regulations could and should be better addressed directly by Ms. Cohen and local elected officials and county commissioners without a full-blown, two-year, taxpayer-funded legislative “study” committee.

On the other hand, if there is to be such a commission formed, it also seems to me the scope of the study should be expanded to include the working conditions for commercial sex workers in both the legal brothels AND the currently-illegal markets…as recommended in a statement by the Nevada Brothel Association presented by commercial sex worker Ruby Rae at the ACR6 hearing last month.

If we’re going to do this thing, let’s do it right.

There’s still time to amend Ms. Cohen’s bill to do a more thorough and comprehensive study of Nevada’s entire commercial sex industry – either as a floor amendment in the Assembly or once it reaches the state Senate.

More on this in the coming days.  In the meantime, we can at least be grateful that Sen. Hardy’s brothel-killer bill is dead…for now.

Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, a limited-government grassroots advocacy organization, and government affairs counsel to the Nevada Brothel Association

(Chuck Muth) – On Tuesday a hearing was held on AB166, a bill sponsored by Assemblywoman Jill Tolles (R-Washoe) to crack down on sex trafficking by people using otherwise legitimate businesses, such as massage parlors, as fronts for the illegal sex trade.

“We have identified there currently exists in the law a loophole that allows, for lack of a better description, franchises of slavery and human trafficking to occur,” Las Vegas police lobbyist Chuck Callaway told the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

“And the people that are running these businesses,” Callaway continued, “it’s very difficult under current language in the law to hold them accountable.”

It’s important to note that, as reporter Michelle Rindels pointed out, Assemblywoman Tolles “was explicit that the bill is not targeting Nevada’s legal brothels.”

That’s an important distinction, as many anti-brothel advocates disingenuously conflate the illegal sex trafficking of women against their will – often underaged – with women who freely choose sex work in Nevada’s legal brothels and are subjected to FBI background checks before being issued a work card.

It’s encouraging that Assemblywoman Tolles recognizes this critical difference and is focusing her attention on the real problem.

One day after the AB166 hearing, Assemblywoman Leslie Cohen (D-Clark) introduced ACR6; a resolution, as reported by Ms. Rindels, calling “for a study on the workplace conditions of Nevada’s legal brothels.”

If authorized, the study would be conducted by three members each of the Nevada State Assembly and Nevada State Senate who would examine over the next two years…

• “The extent to which the rules and working conditions in licensed brothels provide for the health, safety and general welfare of sex workers in licensed brothels”
• “The ways in which contracts between sex workers in licensed brothels and brothel owners and operators protect the physical and mental health of those workers”
• “The adequacy of oversight and regulation by the State and licensing and law enforcement units of local government with respect to the health, safety and general welfare of workers in licensed brothels”
• “Employment issues, including, without, limitation, the classification of sex workers as employees versus independent contractors”

The resolution directs the interim committee to consult with the local governments of counties that currently allow legal brothels, operators and workers of legal brothels, and law enforcement agencies.

It’s encouraging that the bill specifically includes actual brothel owners and workers in the study.  Too often in the past the first-person voices of those directly affected have been shut out of the debate.

The committee would be charged with the submitting a report with “recommended legislation” before the start of the 2021 legislative session.

The Nevada Brothel Association will be closely monitoring these two bills for the rest of the current legislative session and will keep you posted on developments.

Mr. Muth is Government Affairs Counsel to the Nevada Brothel Association

(Chuck Muth) – My friend Grover Norquist – president of Americans for Tax Reform and libertarian-conservative author of a book titled “Leave Us Alone” – is fond of saying that “no one’s life is a complete waste; some simply serve as bad examples.”

He wasn’t talking specifically about Reno lawyer and anti-brothel zealot Jason Guinasso – but he could’ve been.

Guinasso, as you may have read, filed a federal lawsuit against the State of Nevada on Monday asking the court to overturn Nevada’s unique law allowing legal prostitution in the state’s rural counties as long as it occurs in licensed and highly-regulated brothels.

At the heart of Guinasso’s lawsuit is a wafer-thin argument that Nevada’s legal brothels violate the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution and, thus, Washington, DC should come into Nevada and tell Nevada what it can and can’t do.

Bye-bye, Tenth Amendment.

But it’s even worse than that.

It’s also an attack on the First Amendment; as the core of Guinasso’s claim is that websites and social media accounts of legal courtesans working in legal brothels in Nevada are transmitted across state lines where prostitution is illegal and, therefore, should be shut down.

Bye-bye, free speech.

Guinasso claims that if a woman working in a legal Nevada brothel encourages folks who read their websites, blogs or social media posts to come and visit them, that violates the federal Mann Act which makes it illegal for anyone to persuade, induce or entice someone to travel across state lines for the purpose of prostitution.

Of course, that law was established for people who are actually forcing women to engage in prostitution against their will.  Real trafficking.  But that’s simply not the case in Nevada’s legal brothels because all of the women who work there are there of their own free will.

Consenting adults.

Why can’t this guy just leave them alone?  Live and let live.

Meanwhile, prostitution – including the actual trafficking of underage girls, which does not occur in legal brothels – is going on in Las Vegas and Reno, where it remains illegal, every day.  It’s rampant.  Just try walking down the Strip at night without being accosted by a “flipper” handing out “girls to your room” cards.

You’d think Guinasso and his merry band of busy-body, nanny-state, self-righteous moralists would focus on THAT problem; the REAL problem.  But no.

This guy is obsessed with shutting down licensed, regulated and taxed legal brothels where the women who work there are safe and have no fear of being arrested.  Where the clients are safe from getting a sexually transmitted disease – thanks to mandatory condom use and weekly testing – and have no fear of being arrested.

And make no mistake.  Should Guinasso succeed in shutting down Nevada’s legal brothel industry, that won’t make prostitution go away.

All it’ll do is push it back underground and into the shadows, as we were reminded just this week when Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, was charged for allegedly soliciting the services of an illegal sex worker in a Florida massage parlor.

An otherwise law-abiding, upstanding 77-year-old man who lost his wife of 48 years to ovarian cancer in 2011.

“Myra and I had something that was unusual, I think,” Kraft told Forbes in a 2012 interview. “For 10 months after Myra died, I cried every night. I would go out at nights to the events and parties, things I would have normally done with her, then come home to an empty house.”

And that gets to the heart of this business that most people don’t realize.  Many of the men who visit Nevada’s legal brothels are elderly widowers who aren’t gonna be tripping the light fantastic in a Las Vegas nightclub hoping to “get lucky.”

For many men who visit Nevada’s legal brothels it’s not so much about the sex as it is enjoying the companionship of a consenting adult woman which they can no longer enjoy with their spouse or significant other.

And Jason Guinasso wants to criminalize that?  Why can’t he just leave everyone else alone?

Or, at the very least, try to be a little intellectually honest.

When you read Guinasso’s lawsuit you’ll find it littered with statistics, figures and opinions related to prostitution in Nevada without making a distinction between prostitution that goes on illegally in motel rooms, massage parlors, strip clubs and back alleys and that which occurs legally in licensed, regulated and taxed brothels.

It’s hard to have an open, honest debate with people like Guinasso who intentionally try to mislead the public.

Women who voluntarily of their own free will choose – “a woman’s right to choose” – to work in a legal Nevada brothel simply aren’t being “trafficked.”

“Every single worker at the Mustang Ranch is required to undergo an FBI fingerprint and criminal database background check every single year,” Storey County Commissioner Lance Gilman, who also owns the Mustang Ranch, said in a statement on Monday.

“In over 4,000 work card applications filed over the last 20 years by working professionals and employees at the Mustang, not one has turned up to be a victim of trafficking.  Not one.”

For people like Guinasso to compare these two totally different circumstances as if they were the same borders on libelous.

“This is a desperate act by Guinasso,” Mr. Gilman continued.   “He’s trying to do an end run on the people of Nevada.  Unfortunately, it’s just another political stunt by this man.”

Indeed.  But let it not be said his life is a complete waste.  Jason Guinasso expertly fills the role of bad example.  Why can’t he just leave the rest of us alone?

Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, a limited-government grassroots advocacy organization, and government affairs counsel to the Nevada Brothel Association