What: The Billings spa ordinance is an establishment licensing (EL) scheme that is supported by anti-human trafficking groups, including Polaris, a nationally-based organization. It is supposed to target the human trafficking and prostitution that occurs under the guise of massage, and in this case is a 2nd city license that therapists have to get in addition to the regular business license. 

Why we oppose it: There are a ton of reasons why, so we’ll try to be brief.

1. The language is offensive. These ordinances tend to include recycled adult-entertainment, sexually-oriented (AE/SO) business language. Billings’ proposal is no exception. We don’t need to be told to cover up our genitals or not offer sex to our clients. Having that language in there ties us TO the problem rather than separating us FROM the problem. Including that kind of language treats us as criminals, rather than addressing the real problem.
   ** so thinking that this kind of language in a law is ok because it doesn’t apply to you, is not looking at this bigger issue of how it integrates sexual behavior into our profession. 
2. Polaris says that brothels disguised as massage businesses (BDAMBs) are the 2nd largest trafficking problem.¹   What they don’t tell you is that it represented in 2018 only 6% of the entire human trafficking problem.²  We believe a broad brush approach is a better one, rather than picking on us.
3. Human trafficking is a societal issue that deserves resources from the public at large rather than asking one profession (us) to shoulder the costs of addressing this issue. Not to mention that such a legislative scheme doesn’t solve the problem.
4. Establishment licensing doesn’t get BDAMBs out of massage. Remember the big case in Florida a few years ago? Every single one of those businesses was licensed.³ San Francisco, which has one of the most aggressive licensing schemes in the U.S. has a 62% failure rate in shuttering BDAMBs.⁴ And we have many more examples.
5. An evidence-based solution is what’s needed and an EL scheme put forth by Polaris is not it. Landlord education programs that hold landlords accountable for what happens on their property is one way to address the problem. One source says that it has a 75% success rate.⁵
6. The pandemic. All of us are hurting. For some, our practices have collapsed and many of our clients are not returning because of the close-contact nature of our work. Adding more costs will put many more massage therapists out of business.
7. We could go on and on. One of which, is that the proposal won’t work in Billings because of how the exemptions in state law interact with the proposal.

If you want a deep dive on why Polaris’ report on BDAMBs is bad, you can read the entire critique here. 

Why it’s relevant to everyone in Montana

1. As Billings goes, so goes the rest of the state. 
2. It’s an easy jump to go to a state-wide law if a local law is in place. And we don’t want a bad proposal moving to the state level.

What you can do
We’ve already sent out emails specific to the problems in the Billings ordinance. 

To help out, you can: sign a petition, call, write emails, virtually attend and testify at the meeting on January 4th. We’ve already sent out the info on how to do that. Here are some of the links for info on that:

• Read the proposal and our critique
• Read the December 12th letter Deb Kimmet sent to the Billings City Council
• Sign the Petition: http://chng.it/8xtVq5my
• If you don’t live in Billings, volunteer to monitor your local government so that we can get on top of other cities ordinances. email us to volunteer.
• Join the MT Massage Therapists Facebook page to access a post for what your clients can do. If you’re in Billings, join their FB page too.