The regulation of prostitution in the United States is not among the enumerated powers of the federal government; Under the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, it is therefore exclusively the domain of the states to permit, prohibit, or otherwise regulate commercial sex, except insofar as Congress may regulate it as part of interstate commerce with laws like the Mann Act. In most states, prostitution is considered a misdemeanor in the category of public order crime, a crime that disrupts the order of a community. It was at one time considered to be a vagrancy crime.
Currently, Nevada is the only state to allow brothel prostitution, the terms of which are stipulated in the Nevada Revised Statutes. Only 8 counties currently contain active brothels. All forms of prostitution are illegal in Clark County (which contains the Las Vegas–Paradise metropolitan area), Washoe County (which contains Reno), Carson City, Douglas County, and Lincoln County. The other counties theoretically allow brothel prostitution, but some of these counties currently have no active brothels. Street prostitution, "pandering," and living off of the proceeds of a prostitute remain illegal under Nevada law, as elsewhere in the country.
As with other countries, prostitution in the United States can be divided into three broad categories: street prostitution, brothel prostitution, and escort prostitution.
Read more about Prostitution In The United States: Legal Status, Statistics On Prostitutes and Customers, John Schools, References
Famous quotes containing the words the united states, united states, united and/or states:
“To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client; still, one must make the best of the case, for the purposes of Providence.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. A Galileo could no more be elected President of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of soft illusion.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)