Prostitution is not legal in Las Vegas or Reno. In the United States prostitution is mainly a matter of state law, and selling and buying sex are crimes in every state except in licensed brothels in some rural Nevada counties, and except that Maine (since 2023) no longer punishes selling. Nevada bars brothel licences in any county of 700,000 or more people, which is Clark County (Las Vegas); Washoe County (Reno) bans them by ordinance. Federal law adds the Mann Act (taking a person across state lines for prostitution) and, since FOSTA-SESTA in 2018, a crime of running a website with intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person; Section 230 no longer shields such sites from state prosecution or civil sex-trafficking claims. Backpage was seized in 2018 and its owners prosecuted. Source: Prostitution Laws (prostitutionlaws.org), https://prostitutionlaws.org/countries/united-states/, reviewed 2026-11-03, CC BY 4.0.