Analysing the Supreme Court’s judgment on sex work

F or more than three decades, sex workers have told governments and courts how anti-trafficking interventions cause profound harm including forced rescues, indefinite detention in “corrective homes”, separation from children and even threat to life. And for decades, these accounts were only acknowledged in fragments, and never in a comprehensive rights-based framework. That is what makes the Supreme Court’s judgment of May 29, 2026 , so significant.