What Mamdani’s Win Means for Sex

With Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York City mayor, can we expect a change in the city’s policies related to sex work? There are some reasons to suspect that the answer to this question is yes.

Losing NYC mayoral candidate and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo certainly wanted people to think so. Back in August, Cuomo’s team put out a press release calling out “Mamdani’s dangerous support for decriminalizing prostitution.”

It’s true that during his time in the New York State Assembly, Mamdani cosponsored legislation to decriminalize prostitution. Running for reelection in 2022, he pledged that he would reject legislation to implement the Nordic model of sex work regulation, in which some selling of sex is decriminalized but paying for it is not. And back in 2021, he supported the repeal of a statute—referred to by opponents as the “walking while trans” law—that criminalized loitering for purposes of prostitution, saying it is his “fundamental belief that sex work is work.”

But Mamdani did not make prostitution an issue in his mayoral campaign, and even dodged some direct questions about decriminalization, including whether he still opposed criminalizing the purchase of sex.

What we can make of that is anyone’s guess. I suspect Mamdani does support decriminalization, but was smart enough to realize that making a big deal of it wouldn’t do him any favors in his bid to become New York City’s next mayor.

The key question is, now that he has won, will Mamdani move to make a difference in the way the city handles prostitution?

And, as New York City mayor, what can he realistically do? After all, prostitution is a state-level criminal offense.

While New York City leaders can’t change the state laws, they can affect the way they’re enforced within city limits. And the city’s mayor can play a big role in setting the agenda on this.

Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who served from 2014 through 2021, became an advocate for decriminalization, pushed for state lawmakers to pass a decriminalization bill, and heralded a social services approach to helping sex workers, rather than a criminal justice approach. It’s not clear exactly how de Blasio put these beliefs into practice, but during de Blasio’s tenure, the city did cut down on prostitution arrests. Manhattan, for instance, went from around 600 prostitution arrests in 2014 to just a handful in 2021, per data from the Urban Justice Center. The city overall went from 1,790 arrests in 2014 to 376 arrests in 2019, according to a 2021 report from the city. And, in 2021, Manhattan and Brooklyn district attorneys dismissed hundreds of prostitution cases and announced that they would stop prosecuting people for selling sex. (Under Mayor Eric Adams, prostitution-related arrests have ticked back up again, according to The New York Times.)

Mamdani’s campaign has said that he supports de Blasio’s approach to handling sex work. “Zohran will return to the decriminalization approach taken by the de Blasio administration, which means he’ll end raids on sex workers and work with District Attorneys to reduce unnecessary prosecutions,” Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec said in a September statement.

Mamdani himself has implied as much, too. “What I want to do is look at the ways in which the previous administration addressed this issue,” Mamdani told reporters in August. “What we’ve seen from the previous administration is an understanding that the responses that have to be taken into account have much more to do with things beyond the question of an individual sex worker and through the larger system around that,” he said in September. Mamdani also stressed then that he has never supported the legalization of prostitution.

Some—including Cuomo—have tried to portray Mamdani as flip-flopping on the issue of sex work, pointing to his statements supporting decriminalization and rejecting legalization. But there is nothing contradictory in these statements, because decriminalization and legalization are not the same thing.

Legalization refers to a highly regulated system in which prostitution is sanctioned by the state under certain circumstances (and still criminalized outside of those circumstances). It may be permitted, but only in certain districts, or in a brothel, or with a permit. Decriminalization, on the other hand, simply means removing all criminal penalties surrounding the (consensual, adult) selling and purchase of sexual services. There is no enforcement of sanctions against sex workers or their clients, but neither is there a state-regulated brothel system or anything else like that. (Sex worker activists and their allies tend to support decriminalization over legalization.)

“I don’t get the impression that Mamdani’s stance on sex work has shifted one bit,” writes Lux Alptraum in Dame magazine. “I think he is deftly navigating an obviously bad faith attempt to misrepresent his past and present stances, all while avoiding getting sucked into a conversation that’s far too complex to be appropriately addressed in brief sound bites or during a debate.”

As mayor, Mamdani couldn’t technically decriminalize prostitution in New York City, but he could encourage local police to halt prostitution stings and deprioritize prostitution arrests and raids, and support prosecutors declining to bring prostitution cases.

A system where sex workers and their customers face uncertainty about whether they’ll be arrested or charged isn’t ideal, even if they ultimately escape these fates. It still keeps prostitution operating in the black market, where it’s easier for violence and exploitation to thrive and harder for sex workers to take steps to operate safely. That said, cutting down on sex workers’ encounters with police (which can be harmful in their own ways) and helping them avoid criminal records, fines, jail time, and other life-disrupting consequences is still a net positive for sex worker well-being and safety.

Hopefully, Mamdani won’t shy away from supporting decriminalization now that he has won, and will do whatever is within his power as mayor to lessen the negative effects of sex-work criminalization within New York City.

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