A panel advanced legislation Wednesday seeking to crack down on illicit massage parlors in Colorado, moving the bill to the full House for consideration. 

If enacted, House Bill 1300 would provide counties the authority to require special business licenses for massage parlors. While cities already have this authority, 60 out of the 64 counties in Colorado do not, said bill sponsor Rep. Terri Carver, R-Colorado Springs.

Carver said her district is struggling to address illicit massage parlors for a decade and the city of Colorado Springs hasn’t established business license requirements because “they know that if they pass something, the human traffickers will just move outside city limits and pop up in the unincorporated county.”

“Aurora has acted, Denver has acted, Commerce City is looking at an ordinance, Westminster. They’re looking at how to deal with this within the city limits,” Carver said.

Illicit massage parlors offer sexual services while disguised as legitimate massage businesses. They are often staffed by sex trafficking victims, who are brought to the U.S. under promises of a different work. The mostly foreign-born women are forced to work illegal hours and often live inside the businesses, law enforcement officials said.

This is a common practice in Colorado and around the country. While there aren’t any official state estimates, at least 34 illicit massage parlors were reported to be operating in the Colorado Springs area in 2021. Nationwide, an estimated 9,000 illicit massage businesses generate $2.5 billion annually, according to a Polaris report.

Since Aurora passed license requirements in 2018, the city has shut down more than a dozen illicit massage parlors. City inspector Trevor Vaughn said the city believes all of the illicit parlors are gone from Aurora but that a handful near the border operate in unincorporated Arapahoe County.

“What we’re doing here is preventing it from the front end,” said bill sponsor Rep. Lindsey Daugherty, D-Arvada. “This bill is attempting to address the nature of human trafficking. They’re able to move very quickly in and out. So, by the time you’re going in and charging someone with criminal charges, even if you’re able to get to that point, they’re gone.”

Under the bill, counties could require massage parlors to apply for specific business licenses, with exemptions for independent and solo massage practitioners. The applications would require owners to pass a criminal background check and provide contact information. Applications could be denied for a number of reasons, including if the owner has been convicted of a sex crime.

In addition to preventing certain felons from operating, the licenses would create more transparency regarding ownership to help hold the owners accountable when businesses are found to be illicit, Vaughn said.

Even when law enforcement finds illicit businesses, they often cannot locate or identify the owner and can only arrest the workers for prostitution charges, though they’re often victims themselves, Vaughn said.

The House Judiciary Committee unanimously approved the bipartisan bill, sponsored by two Republicans and two Democrats.

“Usually, I would never vote for anything that has the government further intruding on the free market system,” said Rep. Mike Lynch, R-Wellington, “but this human trafficking epidemic we have in this state is an area where I can make exceptions to that rule.”