Florida lawmakers are rapidly advancing a bill they say will tackle human trafficking that would require anyone guilty of soliciting sex from sex workers to be added to a public registry.

But much of the measure, which two key committees approved in February and March without a single ‘nay,’ relies on the work of an anti-pornography and anti-sex work clinical psychologist who has referred to women sex workers as “house n****rs” and ”receptacles” and equates consensual sex with a sex worker with “rape.”

Melissa Farley, a San Francisco clinical psychologist whose work is now being used by the state Senate, is a deeply controversial figure. Lawmakers and other psychologists have described her work as “questionable,” “unqualified,” “inflammatory” and “demeaning propaganda.” In 2010, Farley appeared as a key witness in a prostitution hearing in Ontario. The judge, Justice Susan Himel, dismissed Farley’s testimony.

“I found the evidence of Dr. Melissa Farley to be problematic,” Himel said. “Her advocacy appears to have permeated her opinions ... Dr. Farley’s choice of language is at times inflammatory and detracts from her conclusions.”

Several academics, writers and organizers wrote a scathing commentary on one of Farley’s reports in 2008, citing its biases and ignorance “of even the most basic legal principles.” They said that Farley made “no contribution to our understanding of either the ‘problem’ or the solution.”

In a 2009 article on her nonprofit’s website, Farley, a white woman, wrote that “Prostitution has its very own plantation system” where “indoor” sex workers were the “house n****rs of the system.” (The racist slur is starred in the article.)

Farley told HuffPost that she stands by referring to women sex workers as “receptacles,” as that is how some women described to her as having felt after engaging in it. She initially denied using the racist slur, but when HuffPost sent her the archived link to the 2009 article, Farley said she was comparing “the structural similarities between prostitution and slavery.”

Lauren Book, the Democratic state senator who introduced the anti-trafficking bill in January, told HuffPost that a Farley study that surveyed 526 men indicated that “a registry would be an effective deterrent” to people who might otherwise pay for sex.

But a handful of broader academic studies on the topic produced inconclusive results, said Jill Levenson, a professor of social work at Barry University in southern Florida.

“There is very little, if any, research to support the idea that public registries and public shaming deter any sort of behavior,” Levenson argued. “The problem of human trafficking requires strategies much more complex than putting someone’s name on a list.”