February 2, 2021
Washington Avenue and State Street, Albany, NY 12224
Loitering for the purposes of prostitution (LPP) is a discriminatory statute used by law enforcement to profile and harass individuals based on their race, gender, and/or stereotypes of what a prostitute looks like. Laws that prosecute intent—rather than action—allow law enforcement to enforce violations at their discretion, threatening equal protection under the law. As “stop-and-frisk” policies have been used to profile Black and Latinx New Yorkers, LPP gave law enforcement an avenue to exercise discriminatory profiling of transgender and cisgender women of color. LPP became known as “The Walking WhileTrans Ban.” S1351/A3355 passed in New York, repealing the law.
