A lawsuit filed in California, seeking to legalize prostitution in the Golden state, is arguing just that—that paying for sex is a Constitutional right.

American courts continue to recognize that private sexual activity is a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Yet, when the private, consensual sexual activity occurs as part of a voluntary commercial exchange between adults, the State prohibits the activity and deprives those adults of their constitutional rights.

In other words, if sex is legal, why is paying for sex illegal?

The lawsuit [PDF] continues:

There is not even a legitimate governmental interest which could possibly justify California’s prostitution laws. The government has no interest in regulating such activities so long as the activities occur in private amongst consenting adults in furtherance of their liberty interest in their own sexual behavior. Furthermore, the fact that the governing majority in a state has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting its practice.

(Not everyone agrees it's "immoral." There is also a moral case to be made for the legalization and regulation of prostitution.)

The lawsuit was filed by two Cincinnati-based lawyers, Lou Sirkin and Brian O'Connor, on behalf of an organization called Erotic Service Provider Legal, Education & Research Project. It names three current or former prostitutes and a man with a disability who wants to use their services as plaintiffs in the case. The San Francisco Business Times notes that Sirkin has been involved in several high-profile cases involving individual liberty issues, including "a Texas case to overturn a law that made sex toys illegal and an obscenity case in Pittsburgh to allow the sale of movies over the Internet."

“The timing is right on this one,” Sirkin told the San Francisco Business Times. “We think we can win and sustain it. It’s an important issue of individual freedom in a country that prides itself on individual freedom."