With states and cities across the country forming a patchwork of partial shutdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s one state that’s in a league of its own when it comes to the battle over shuttered businesses: Nevada, where brothels are legal but have been ordered closed since March 17, despite the reopening of other “close contact” business, including spas, salons and massage parlors.
In response to what she sees as an “arbitrary” decision that has left legal sex workers “financially devastated,” Alice Little, an employee at the Moonlite BunnyRanch in Mound House, Nev., who’s considered the top-earning legal sex worker in the U.S., filed a complaint and motion for a preliminary injunction against Nevada’s Gov. Steve Sisolak in the Third Judicial District Court in Lyon County. The lawsuit cites unstated damages and seeks the right for her and other licensed prostitutes to “ply their legal trade” at home or other private locations. The suit alleges that Sisolak has, “without any rational basis, decided to single out brothels.”