The Supreme Court of Canada on Friday struck down all current restrictions, "including bans on brothels and on street solicitation, declaring the laws were unconstitutional because they violated prostitutes' safety," Reuters reported.
The 9-0 unanimous decision "will take effect in one year, inviting Parliament to try to come up with some other way to regulate the sex trade if it chooses to do so," Reuters also reported.
Many prostitutes "have no meaningful choice [but to] engage in the risky economic activity of prostitution. It makes no difference that the conduct of pimps and johns is the immediate source of the harms suffered by prostitutes. The impugned laws deprive people engaged in a risky, but legal, activity of the means to protect themselves against those risks," wrote Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin.
The ruling marks "a victory for sex workers seeking safer working conditions because it found that the laws violated the guarantee to life, liberty and security of the person," The Associated Press reported. "The federal government appealed the decision that invalidated or altered the laws, while a group of sex-trade workers who brought the case initially appealed the soliciting ban,"
Prostitution is legal in many countries throughout Europe and Latin American, but issue like human trafficking and criminal elements, like serial killers preying on women, have caused lawmakers to further review its inherent dangers.
"The safety of prostitutes became a high-profile issue in Canada following the trial and 2007 conviction of serial killer Robert Pickton, who preyed on prostitutes and other women in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighborhood," Reuters reported.
