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LEGAL: Hiring drivers, bodyguards and support staff ILLEGAL: “Exploitation” of sex workers by pimps LEGAL: Working in organized brothels or “bawdy houses” ILLEGAL: Openly soliciting customers on the street

TORONTO – The Court of Appeal for Ontario has swept aside some of the country’s anti-prostitution laws saying they place unconstitutional restrictions on prostitutes’ ability to protect themselves.

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The landmark decision means sex workers will be able to hire drivers, bodyguards and support staff and work indoors in organized brothels or “bawdy houses,” while “exploitation” by pimps remains illegal.

However, openly soliciting customers on the street remains prohibited with the judges deeming that “a reasonable limit on the right to freedom of expression.”

The province’s highest court suspended the immediate implementation of striking the bawdy house law for a year to allow the government an opportunity to amend the Criminal Code.

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The government’s attempt to salvage its prostitution prohibitions, “implies that those who choose to engage in the sex trade are for that reason not worthy of the same constitutional protection as those who engage in other dangerous, but legal enterprises,” three majority justices of the five-judge panel wrote in their decision.