(The Center Square) – California Democrats reversed course, partially restoring a bill making soliciting children for prostitution a felony after national outrage over their initial gutting that even stripped its author, a Democrat, from the bill.
“For adult offenders at least three years older than the minor, prosecutors will have new tools to bring felony charges,” said Assembly Public Safety Committee Chair Nick Schultz, D-Burbank, in a statement. “When the adult offender is within three years of age of the minor, solicitation remains illegal and a misdemeanor.”
Despite support for the original bill from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, Democrats previously voted to strip Assemblywoman Maggy Krell, D-Sacramento, of authorship of Assembly Bill 379 and remove the felony provisions. Schultz had previously said he would instead “host info hearings on the issue in the fall,” rather than maintain the felony provisions.
The amended bill, which still makes loitering to solicit prostitutes of any age a misdemeanor, passed committee and seems to address concerns raised by other Democrats that the original version would not have been “smart criminal justice policy.”
“Sending an 18 year old high school senior to state prison for offering his 17 year old classmate $20 to fool around isn’t smart criminal justice policy,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, on Bluesky. “Yet that’s what some people are effectively advocating for in this misleading debate.”
Wiener sponsored Senate Bill 357, a bill that decriminalized loitering to commit prostitution, arguing that the then-status quo contributes to “discrimination on the basis of gender, race, class and perceived sex worker status – in particular, targeting Black women and members of the transgender community.”
AB 379 is considered a response to SB 357, since which vast swathes of California have become open prostitution zones, with a 40-block area of South Central Los Angeles now covered by hundreds of prostitutes.
“Goal has always been to hammer the creeps who are buying teens for sex and create more support for victims,” said Krell on X. “New version accomplishes these goals, and makes it a felony for a grown man to buy a child for sex.”
The broad restoration of the bill after public outrage mirrored the paths of SB 14 in 2023, which made sex trafficking minors a “serious felony” under the state’s three-strikes law, and SB 1414 in 2024, which made soliciting children up to 15 years old for prostitution a possible felony, with misdemeanor carve-outs for the solicitation of 16- and 17-year-olds.
SB 14 unanimously passed the state Senate, but at first failed in the Assembly Public Safety Committee when then-Assembly Majority Leader Isaac Bryan, D–Los Angeles, said the bill would increase incarceration, which he says does little to deter crime.
“Longer sentences … increase our investment in systems of harm and subjugation at the expense of the investments that the communities need to not have this problem to begin with,” said Bryan in committee.
The bill eventually passed after a second committee hearing was held due to national outrage, with Bryan still abstaining.
SB 1414 originally would have made attempted or successful solicitation of sex with a minor for money a felony with a prison sentence ranging from two to four years, a fine not exceeding $25,000 and registration as a sex offender. Democrats forcefully added amendments over the author’s objections.
These amendments made buying sex from 16- and 17-year-olds only punishable as a misdemeanor, and from 15 years and younger a “wobbler” — with two days of jail and/or a fine as punishment for a misdemeanor and jail time but no prison time as a felony.
The amendments also give judges the option to eliminate the minimum mandatory two days of jail, remove punishment for those who did not know and could not reasonably have known the solicited child was a minor, makes the felony charge only punishable with jail, not prison time, and no longer require first-time offenders to register as sex offenders.
