Lyon County, Nev. Pushed in part by activists who want to end sex trafficking and prostitution, residents that have long looked the other way are now petitioning to change course. Sex work has been accepted in Nevada since the middle of the 19th century. The state legalized it in the s with a rule that all counties with fewer than , residents could opt to license brothels — prostitution is illegal in Reno and Las Vegas. There are seven counties with legal brothels in the state and fewer than two dozen legal brothels in all.
Previous efforts to curb prostitution in Nevada have failed, including a proposed referendum in Churchill County that sought to put a similar question to voters in Because of that ballot initiative, the federal government worked to prevent U.
If successful, the group plans to move to other Nevada counties and is considering a campaign to make a statewide change to the law. The PAC and its supporters have chosen a moral argument, rejecting the idea that any woman would choose to do sex work for a living. Melissa Holland, who runs the nonprofit Awaken, which works to end sex trafficking, said many of the women involved in the sex trade — including those in legal brothels — were exploited as children and continued into sex work.
These women were not raised to actually look at themselves and choose this. The ballot measures are the latest in a string of battles over how to regulate sex trafficking without harming sex workers.
The U. House and Senate passed bills this year targeting the online advertising of sex work, which anti-sex-work advocates say conflate sex work and sex trafficking. The population here has seen a relative boom, doubling to more than 50, residents since , in large part because of a recent influx of massive technology company campuses belonging to Tesla, Switch, Zulily and Jet. Denise Berumen, one of the original five petitioners calling for a referendum, said at a recent news conference that members of the community worry about being able to attract new, wealthy residents if the brothels are still within their midst.
