Is ‘sex trafficking’ tax against strip clubs legal? Georgia Supreme Court will decide
A few years ago, the Georgia legislature decided that the state’s adult clubs were purveyors of child sex trafficking. It passed a 1% tax on strip clubs. The funds, they say, are to combat child sex trafficking.
Opponents of the law say it unfairly punishes businesses with no connection to the sexual exploitation of children, while others ask why the state plans to profit from the proceeds of sex trafficking, if what the state claims, is indeed true.
A lawyer for the state told the Georgia Supreme Court that studies have shown strip clubs are frequented by child sex traffickers, and taxing strip clubs is less harmful to those businesses than banning them altogether.
The businesses say “adult” clubs are not places where child traffickers or pedophiles hang out and if child sex trafficking is as rampant in adult clubs as the state claims, why aren’t the laws on the books, or the state, doing its job?
