It’s time to end Nevada’s legal sex trade.
It’s time to protect people being exploited, and hold the people exploiting them accountable.
Nevada is the only state in the nation that licenses brothels. Businesses, faith communities, service providers and leaders across Nevada and around the world are standing together to tell lawmakers: it’s time to change that.
Legal doesn’t mean safe.
Licensing a brothel doesn’t change what happens inside it. The pimps, coercion and violence of the illegal trade are found in Nevada’s legal brothels too, and the legal market operates alongside the illegal one rather than replacing it.
The promise vs. the Nevada reality
| The promise | The Nevada reality |
|---|---|
| Nevada’s online sex market is the largest in the nation per resident, 63% larger than the next state. | |
| Near legal brothels, people in the illegal trade face the same trafficking risk as anywhere else in Nevada. | |
| 57% of women in legal brothels also paid a pimp; 24% had been physically assaulted. | |
| 81% of women in legal brothels wanted to escape prostitution. | |
| In Storey County, a brothel owner sat on the county board that licenses brothels for 13 years. |
Nevada also ranks #1 in the nation for domestic violence deaths, #3 for rape and sexual assault, and #4 for women murdered by men.
Source: Rights4Girls, 2025
Inside a legal brothel
Brothels call the women who work there “independent contractors.” Survivors and federal lawsuits describe something else:
- Locked inside for weeks at a time, often miles from the nearest town and without a car.
- Half of every payment goes to the brothel, and women also pay for their own room and board.
- $150–200 a week for required medical exams that buyers never have to take.
- Fines for breaking house rules, including $1,500 for being late to a lineup called with three minutes’ notice.
- Debts to the brothel that keep women selling sex to pay them off.
Source: Price, 2026, drawing on survivor accounts and federal lawsuits
What the law and courts show
Lyon County requires brothels to be enclosed by a fence at least six feet high, with a gate that prevents entry unless opened from inside.
In 2022, a federal judge allowed a sex trafficking claim against the Chicken Ranch brothel to go forward, based on debt and control over women’s ability to leave. The case is ongoing.
Source: Price, 2026
- 5,016+
- people sold for sex online in Nevada in an average month, a conservative count that excludes brothels
- Source: Creighton University HTI, 2018
- 700+
- people a month at high risk of being trafficking victims in Nevada’s online sex market
- Source: Creighton University HTI, 2018
- 68%
- of people in prostitution meet the criteria for PTSD, in the same range as combat veterans and torture survivors
- Source: Farley et al., 2003
I was berated during ‘tea party’ (weekly meetings with the administration), as the brothel owner would threaten me with holding my work card to keep me from being employed elsewhere. If I didn’t make enough I would be assaulted. For some there is no escape.
Three questions.
Short answers to the questions people ask most.
Nevada is ready for this.
In a 2025 poll of Nevada voters, overwhelming majorities backed the core ideas behind this coalition.
- 95%
- agree Nevada should protect people who are being exploited and penalize those who exploit them
- 87%
- support services that help people leave the sex trade and keep others from entering it
- 84%
- support holding sex buyers accountable through required education and fines that fund survivor services
- 81%
- support increasing penalties for illegally buying sex in Nevada
Source: APCO Worldwide for The Jensen Project, survey of 759 Nevada registered voters, May–June 2025
It’s time for the Equality Model.
A proven approach that ends the legal sex trade by targeting the demand that drives it, while treating people who are sold as people to support, not criminals to punish.
Protect people who are bought, sold and trafficked
Remove criminal penalties for the people being exploited, so no one carries a record for what was done to them.
Hold buyers and profiteers accountable
Sex buyers, pimps and brothel owners, the people who create and profit from the market, face real consequences, with fines and required education that help pay for survivor services.
Fund exit services
Housing, trauma-informed care, job training and legal help so survivors have a real way out, and prevention so others never enter.
- 40%
- drop in street prostitution in Sweden after it adopted the model in 1999
- 13.6% → 7.4%
- share of Swedish men who buy sex, before and after the law
- 50%
- drop in street prostitution in Northern Ireland after its 2014 law
Source: Rights4Girls, Buyers Unmasked, 2025
Legislation: [Bill number and short title, once filed] Read the bill summary
Add your name.
Tell Nevada lawmakers it’s time to protect people being exploited and hold buyers and brothel owners accountable.
Want to do more? Find and contact your Nevada legislators.
Are you a survivor of Nevada’s sex trade? Sign the survivor letter to legislators.
They’re saying it’s time.
These organizations, businesses and leaders support ending legal prostitution in Nevada.
- Ally NeuromedicalBusiness
- ARC WorkPlace ServicesBusiness
- AwakenNonprofit
- Calvary Red RockFaith community
- CONVO ChurchFaith community
- Done Right Set Up and ServiceBusiness
- Etcheberry Units LLCBusiness
- Faithful LivingFaith community
- FerventFaith community
- Financial Freedom ReliefBusiness
- Foresight FireBusiness
- Freedom SignBusiness
- God’s Country MinistriesFaith community
- Hair at Tiffany’sBusiness
- JK Trinity, LLCBusiness
- John G Wyma, PhDLeader
- Lionheart TherapyBusiness
- Luke 92 SolutionsBusiness
- Marketplace Design, LLCBusiness
- Mattress By Appointment SparksBusiness
- Mission EnergyBusiness
- Morning StarFaith community
- Outlook Christian ChurchFaith community
- Pacific Coast Wire and CableBusiness
Tell Nevada lawmakers it’s time.
Add your organization to It’s Time, Nevada. It takes about two minutes. Your logo shows lawmakers the breadth of support for change.
Sources
- Price, C. N., Clark, T. D., & Faller, J. (2018). Nevada’s Online Commercial Sex Market. Human Trafficking Initiative, Creighton University.
- Farley, M. (2007). Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada: Making the Connections. Prostitution Research & Education.
- Farley, M., et al. (2003). Prostitution and trafficking in nine countries: An update on violence and posttraumatic stress disorder. Journal of Trauma Practice, 2(3/4), 33–74.
- Price, C. M. (2026). Impunity: A case study on sex trafficking in Nevada brothel prostitution. Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence, 11(2), Article 5.
- APCO Worldwide for The Jensen Project. (2025). Voter Perceptions of Prostitution in 5 Key States. Nevada sample: 759 registered voters, May 13 – June 9, 2025.
- Vafa, Y., & Hennick, N. (2025). Buyers Unmasked: Exposing the Men Who Buy Sex & Solutions to End Exploitation. Rights4Girls.