An ordinance decriminalizing sex work is headed to Pittsburgh City Council | Social Justice | Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh City Paper
Article by: Jordana Rosenfeld: Barb Warwick leads a Pride legislation press conference regarding bills to protect sex workers regardless of their gender outside of the City-County Building on June 24, 2025.Pittsburgh City Council is considering an ordinance that would reduce the minimum penalty for individuals convicted of engaging in sex work, downgrading the offense from a misdemeanor to a summary offense.
Currently, the minimum penalty for engaging in sex work “can involve up to a year in jail, and it also can involve a sliding scale of fines that can go all the way up to $10,000,” Theresa Nightingale, executive director of For Safer Sex Work Pittsburgh, told City Paper. The proposed ordinance would lower the minimum penalty to “just a small fine similar to a traffic ticket, so it’s a summary offense instead.”
Current laws also require those charged with prostitution to show up to court, a requirement that the proposed ordinance would do away with.
“[Existing] penalties hinder future opportunities for employment, housing, custody over children, and other things like that for workers,” District 5 City Councilor Barb Warwick, who introduced the ordinance, said during a council meeting on July 2, noting that the people most often receiving these penalties are “those who are already our most vulnerable.”
People gather at a Pride legislation press conference regarding bills to protect sex workers regardless of their gender outside of the City-County Building on June 24, 2025.Several Pittsburghers spoke in favor of the ordinance at the July 2 meeting. Speakers focused on how the ordinance would protect sex workers, who are often already marginalizedbecause of their race, gender, and/or immigration status, from further criminalization and vulnerability to state violence by reducing their contact with the criminal legal system.
Sex worker rights advocate Maggie Oates spoke about how fear of carceral consequences has kept local sex workers from seeking help when they have found themselves in abusive or exploitative situations.
“Every single year, I encounter someone who is stuck in violent circumstances because of fear of arrest,” she said.
Oates analyzed six years of local arrest data related to prostitution, the findings of which have been included in the “whereas” clauses of the proposed ordinance. Oates said that only one arrest of the almost 700 she analyzed was related to trafficking, and only three percent were instances involving violence or coercion.
“Arrests are targeting the consensual workers, targeting Black workers, draining city resources, and missing cases with actual violence 97% of the time,” Oates said. “It is clear that the methods we’re using right now are not reaching the people that are actually facing scary situations, so I am begging us to try something new.”
Polish Hill resident Alexandra Weiner said it was important to help sex workers, many of whom are trans, stay out of the county jail.
“As a trans woman who has done sex work before and not had 25 to 100 dollars in my bank account at all times, going to [Allegheny County Jail], which is notorious for the torture of trans women, is torture as punishment for trying to work. The ordinance, while just a start, removes the existential threat of carceral violence from hanging over our heads.”
Barb Warwick leads a Pride legislation press conference regarding bills to protect sex workers regardless of their gender outside of the City-County Building on June 24, 2025.North Side resident Christina Huang said that, as it currently stands, city law penalizing those charged with selling sex doles out a criminal conviction that could jeopardize immigrant sex workers’ ability to live in the U.S., given the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation push.
“With current ICE abductions, we are living in a very hostile time for immigrants and an extremely antagonistic and isolating time for migrant sex workers, who are just trying to put food on the table, who are trying to pay their bills,” Huang said. “Getting convicted of solicitation of prostitution is a tier-three misdemeanor that could trigger a deportation case.”
Nightingale was also behind Pittsburgh’s 2015 ordinance decriminalizing possession of small amounts of cannabis, and she told City Paperthat the sex work ordinance is modeled after that legislation. Shortly after she won election to the local Democratic Committee and Barb Warwick won election to City Council, Nightingale said she approached Warwick about the possibility of a bill lowering the minimum penalty for sex work similar to the cannabis ordinance.
“She said, if you do the groundwork and bring it back to me, I’d be more than happy to introduce that,” Nightingale said.
The ordinance is the product of two years of conversations with elected officials and community groups, and Nightingale said that the majority of people and groups that advocates have approached with the idea have been supportive. Local organizations, including Pittsburgh Action Against Rape, NAMI Keystone, and SisTers PGH, have voiced their support for the ordinance.
Nightingale said that common arguments she hears against the ordinance imagine that lowering the minimum penalty will encourage an increase in unlawful behavior. This argument, Nightingale said, reflects a lack of understanding of why people do sex work in the first place.
“But let’s just say, for all intents and purposes, that, yeah, there’s about 50 new happy hookers that are in Pittsburgh doing the work [because of the bill]. They don’t deserve to have these charges around their neck like an albatross, either,” Nightingale said.
Barb Warwick leads a Pride legislation press conference regarding bills to protect sex workers regardless of their gender outside of the City-County Building on June 24, 2025.Crucially, Nightingale said, the ordinance would not change anything about the ability of law enforcement to investigate or charge people engaged in sex trafficking.
“As a woman and as a worker myself, and also as someone who happens to be a mom, sex trafficking matters to me, but the ordinance does not prevent the police from going after traffickers. This is only for adult consensual sex work, and there’s a big difference,” Nightingale said. She noted that law enforcement could still choose to pursue more advanced charges, and that this ordinance would simply provide the option for a lesser penalty.
For Safer Sex Work has discussed this ordinance with the police and district attorney’s office, Nightingale said, and plans to do more outreach to educate law enforcement about the change to the minimum penalty should the ordinance pass.
The bill was unanimously given an affirmative recommendation without much discussion and will be voted on by the entire council on July 8. In addition to Warwick, Council President Daniel Lavelle and Councilmembers Erika Strassburger, Deb Gross, and Khari Mosley are cosponsors of the ordinance.
https://www.pghcitypaper.com/author/jordana-rosenfeld
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