Calif. Member of Congress to Introduce Bill to Study FOSTA Harms

When the FOSTA/SESTA law, which was supposedly designed to curb online sex trafficking, came up for a vote in the United States House of Representatives early last year, 388 members voted for it—with only 25 opposed, as AVN.com reported. But one of those 25 was 43-year-old second-term California Rep. Ro Khanna, who now reportedly plans to introduce new legislation to study the harms caused to sex workers by the law. Khanna was also one of only 12 Democrats to vote against the bill. “The SESTA-FOSTA bills were meant to prevent online sex trafficking. But, they have criminalized sex workers and free speech instead,” Khanna wrote in a Facebook post last year, explaining his opposition to the law. “Because of this bill, sex workers can’t screen clients online, are forced underground and exploited, and are put in danger.” Sex workers strongly opposed the bill, on the basis that—as Khanna noted—it removed the safety features offered by the ability to screen clients online, as well as to communicate with other sex workers about working conditions, safety advice and other useful information. And in fact, in one study, as AVN.com reported, the law was linked to an alarming 170 percent spike in sex trafficking cases in San Francisco, even as overall crime declined. Khanna has also called for the bill’s repeal and, in a Twitter post, asked the 2020 field of Democratic presidential candidates to support abolishing the law. But that may be difficult to achieve, as all of the candidates who were in the House or Senate when the votes were taken—including Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren—supported FOSTA/SESTA, as AVN.com has noted.  Khanna’s proposed bill would ask the United States Department of Health and Human Services and National Health Services to collect hard data on the impact of FOSTA/SESTA, both in terms of how well it had achieved its supposed aim of curbing sex traffic, and whether it has caused, as Khanna said, “more violence, more harm to the public,” as quoted by BuzzFeed. Khanna said that he expects his bill to receive wide support. “It was a wrong vote,” Khanna told Buzzfeed. “We need to now study it and understand the consequences, which I don’t think Congress fully considered. I can’t see any reason for opposing the collection of data.” Photo By Slowking4 / Wikimedia Commons