Minneapolis Considers Allowing Bathhouses and Adult Sex Venues
Proposed ordinances would amend a 1988 ban to allow and regulate businesses permitting on-premises sexual activity between consenting adults.
The Minneapolis City Council is expected to consider directing staff to study a package of four proposed ordinances that would reverse the city’s decades-old ban on businesses facilitating “high-risk sexual conduct” — enacted during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s — and establish a regulatory framework for such venues.
One ordinance would add a new chapter to city code allowing adult sex venues and establishing licensing and business regulations for establishments where consenting adults can engage in sexual activity.
Another ordinance would amend the city’s zoning code to update definitions and standards for sexually oriented uses, eliminating “stigmatizing” language and reflecting advances in HIV prevention — the original impetus for the 1988 bathhouse ban. A third ordinance would amend the city’s health and sanitation code, specifically provisions related to contagious diseases and so-called “high-risk sexual conduct.”
A fourth ordinance would amend the city’s “miscellaneous offenses” code to create exceptions for licensed establishments where consenting adults can engage in sexual activity.
Adult bathhouses and sex venues operated in Minneapolis prior to the 1980s, serving as gathering places for gay men. But the emergence of HIV — and the surge in AIDS cases, particularly among gay men — led some city leaders, including members of the LGBTQ community, to push for their closure. At the time, many major U.S. cities took similar steps to curb the spread of the virus.
In 1986, the 315 Health Club — the last adult bathhouse to operate in the city — shut down its “orgy rooms” and began distributing free condoms and AIDS prevention information to warn customers about the risks of condomless sex. Two years later, it closed after being picketed by protesters carrying signs reading: “AIDS kills / Avoid gay bath houses.” The protest was led by a gay former customer who blamed anonymous sex for the spread of HIV.
Shortly after the closure of the 315 Health Club, City Council Member Brian Coyle — an openly gay man who was secretly living with HIV and did not publicly disclose his diagnosis until just before his death in 1991 — helped pass an ordinance banning adult-oriented businesses that facilitate “high-risk sexual conduct,” defined as fellatio, anal intercourse, or vaginal intercourse for pay. The ordinance also sought to limit anonymous sex by prohibiting holes in building partitions — also known as “glory holes” — used to facilitate sexual activity.
A police officer who worked in the department’s vice unit at the time told the Star Tribune that, prior to the ban, he had arrested hundreds of people in bookstores and saunas for indecent conduct, sodomy, and prostitution.
Three years ago, the Safer Sex Spaces Coalition — which includes the HIV prevention group Aliveness Project, the LGBTQ advocacy group OutFront MN, and other community stakeholders — formed to lobby the City Council to remove language from the 1988 ordinance targeting same-sex activity and people with HIV/AIDS. The ordinance was updated in 2023 to remove that language.
More recently, the coalition has urged the City Council to create a business license for adult sex venues, arguing the 1988 ban is outdated — particularly given advances in HIV prevention — and has driven sex-related gatherings underground into “unsafe and inaccessible spaces,” while discouraging outreach by clinics and public health experts to provide safer sex supplies and STI/HIV testing.
In response, Minneapolis City Council President Elliot Payne, Council Members Jason Chavez and Soren Stevenson have proposed the four ordinance changes.
“LGBTQIA+ gathering spaces, including bathhouses, have long been targeted by criminalization and policing, and our communities have paid a devastating price for that,” Chavez said in a statement. “That’s why we’re referring this to staff to begin building policy alongside community members and stakeholders.”
Payne told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that the plan to regulate bathhouses would model efforts in San Francisco, where officials have imposed safety and public health regulations, including requirements for condoms, monitoring, staff training, lighting, and wash-up and waste disposal facilities.
“Parties and events that operate as adult sex venues already happen in the shadows, and we are trying to ensure that they are safe for patrons, especially when LGBTQ+ individuals are under attack by the federal government,” he said.
While the City Council is not expected to make a final decision yet, it is expected to direct staff to conduct further research before deciding whether to lift the ban.
Council Member Michael Rainville noted that his aunt, Alice Rainville, was City Council president when the ban was passed. He said any proposal to revive bathhouse culture in the city is likely to be controversial and could face opposition from residents, particularly in more conservative communities.
“I want to learn more. It’s very vague language,” he told the Star Tribune. “I look forward to the conversation and debate. It’s hard to tell what the intent is, other than allowing people to have sex in commercial buildings.”
Attorney Joe Tamburino told CBS News that legalizing bathhouses could pose legal risks for business owners and complicate the role of law enforcement.
“First, there is going to be owner liability,” he said. “What will the owners be liable for, or when someone goes to a bathhouse, will they have to sign waivers where they say, ‘Whatever happens to me in here, I’m not going to sue the owner.'”
In nearby St. Paul, bathhouses are licensed as long as “no unlawful acts” occur on the premises. The city does not appear to have venues where sexual activity is permitted.
A 2024 city auditor’s report on “sexual encounter establishments, swingers’ clubs, and sex clubs” found that six U.S. cities — including Duluth, Chicago, Seattle, and Miami — allow bathhouses without special permits or regulations beyond standard business requirements for amenities such as food, pools, and alcohol. None of those cities reported issues with the businesses, according to the Star Tribune.
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