CARSON CITY, NV—Rebekah Charleston, a former prostitute turned "anti-trafficking activist" who now lives in Texas, has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Nevada seeking to have the state's legal brothels declared "unconstitutional." It also seeks an injunction to have the state criminalize the practice of prostitution in the nine counties where it is already legal, and to have the state create a $2 million fund to help sex workers transition out of that industry.
The suit names, as defendants, the state itself, the entire state legislature, and Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak.
Notably, there is nothing in either the U.S. Constitution, whose Tenth Amendment states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people," nor in the Constitution of the State of Nevada which has anything to say about the practice of prostitution, though seven counties have passed local ordinances outlawing the brothel industry there.
In the suit, the text of which was not available in readable form on PACER, Charleston reportedly claims to have been sexually trafficked for 10 years by two pimps, and that for a one- or two-month period somewhere within that time frame—she guessed it may have been in 2004 or 2005—one of her pimps required her to work at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch and the Love Ranch North, both in Lyon County and both owned by the late Dennis Hof.
Charleston also reportedly claims that "while prostitution may be legal under state law, it encourages the illegal transportation of sex slaves to Nevada in violation of the Mann Act."
According to an article in the conservative Las Vegas Review-Journal, "Her suit alleges that her pimp sent her to the brothels as a 'form of punishment' and that she was 'not permitted to turn down a sex buyer.'" (How the pimp would know whether she turned down a customer was not revealed, though the only people who would have been present at the brothel during working hours would have been brothel employees, prostitutes and customers.)
Moreover, between 2002 and 2009, cable channel HBO was intermittently on the Bunny Ranch premises filming for the series Cathouse, and if any of that filming overlapped Charleston's presence at the brothel, she could have reached out to that film crew as well.
Of course, before being allowed to practice the profession of prostitution in Nevada, those who wish to work in a brothel are required to submit an application to the state and go through a background check for possible criminal records in Nevada or elsewhere. At any point in this process, Charleston could have informed a state official that she was being forced to perform sex acts for money, but Charleston never did so.
"Every single worker at the Mustang Ranch is required to undergo an FBI fingerprint and criminal database background check every single year," Mustang Ranch owner Lance Gilman told Reno's KOLO-TV. "In over 4,000 work card applications filed over the last 20 years by working professionals and employees at the Mustang, not one has turned up to be a victim of trafficking."
Furthermore, Hof was well-known to have been very careful in his hiring practices, and anyone he suspected of not working at his brothels voluntarily would have been asked to leave.
Interestingly, Charleston's attorney for the lawsuit is Jason Guinasso, one of two Lyon County officials who worked to get an anti-brothel initiative on the ballot. That initiative was soundly defeated, 80 percent to 20 percent, in the 2018 election.
