The Minneapolis City Council will consider legalizing and regulating venues where consenting adults can engage in sexual activity, including adult bathhouses.
The city has banned such venues for nearly 40 years.
In 1988, Minneapolis passed an ordinance to ban bathhouses, which at that time included three establishments: Hennepin Baths, Locker Room Baths and Big Daddy’s Bath House. All of them closed prior to the ban; Locker Room Baths was known as the 315 Health Club at the time.
The city council referred a package of four proposed ordinances to staff. The ordinances would create a licensing framework, update zoning regulations, revise health standards and add exceptions to existing indecency laws.
The proposed changes come as the city council also considers an ordinance that would decriminalize drug paraphernalia.
Adult bathhouses and sex venues were a component of nightlife prior to the advent of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, which led to the passage of numerous ordinances banning them across virtually all U.S. urban areas. The last bathhouse to operate legally in Minneapolis closed in 1988.
In a statement, council member Jason Chavez argued: “LGBTQIA+ gathering spaces, including bathhouses, have long been targeted by criminalization and policing, and our communities have paid a devastating price for that.”
Several cities in Minnesota, including Duluth and St. Paul, have allowed bathhouses to continue operating with varying levels of oversight.
One ordinance would add a new chapter to city code specifically for adult sex venues, establishing licensing and business regulations for establishments where sexual activity between consenting adults may be facilitated.
“We don’t necessarily look back at the codes that we’ve adopted and revisit them and be like, ‘is this still what we need?’ I think this is something we don’t need if it doesn’t match our current public health landscape,” said one advocate.
Historians note that there was a rich and expanding industry for adult bathhouses in the Twin Cities before the 1979 raid, when they went largely unmonitored by police departments.
Compared to other major cities, Minneapolis is an outlier by not having bathhouses. Numerous cities across the nation—including Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Cleveland, Ohio, Berkeley, Calif., and Dallas, Texas—have them, as does Duluth.
The council is expected to forward a series of directives to city staff on Thursday that would decriminalize and legalize adult bathhouses and sex venues while introducing zoning and health ordinances. A final vote is expected in June after a public hearing.