I'd say this is a big deal. From The NY Times:
"The Manhattan district attorney’s office announced Wednesday that it would no longer prosecute prostitution and unlicensed massage, putting the weight of one of the most high-profile law enforcement offices in the United States behind the growing movement to change the criminal justice system’s approach to sex work.

The district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., revealed the new policy as he appeared virtually in court to ask a judge to dismiss 914 open cases involving prostitution and unlicensed massage, along with 5,080 cases in which the charge was loitering for the purposes of prostitution.

The law that made the latter charge a crime, which had become known as the “walking while trans” law, was repealed by New York State in February.

Mr. Vance said that with the announcement, his office had fully shifted its approach to prostitution. Many of the cases he moved to dismiss dated to the 1970s and 1980s, when New York waged a war against prostitution in an effort to clean up its image as a center of iniquity and vice.“Over the last decade we’ve learned from those with lived experience, and from our own experience on the ground: Criminally prosecuting prostitution does not make us safer, and too often, achieves the opposite result by further marginalizing vulnerable New Yorkers,” Mr. Vance said in a statement.

The office will continue to prosecute other crimes related to prostitution, including patronizing sex workers and sex trafficking.

Manhattan will join Baltimore, Philadelphia and other jurisdictions that have declined to prosecute sex workers. Brooklyn also does not prosecute people arrested for prostitution, but instead refers them to social services before they are compelled to appear in court — unless the district attorney’s office there is unable to reach them.

The Brooklyn district attorney, Eric Gonzalez, in January moved to dismiss hundreds of open cases related to prostitution and loitering, and said that he would eventually ask that more than a thousand be dismissed. The Queens district attorney, Melinda Katz, followed in March, moving to dismiss hundreds of prostitution related cases.

Prosecutions for sex work had already been dropping dramatically over the past decade, said Abigail Swenstein, a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s Exploitation Intervention Project, with occasional spikes, such as one during 2014 when the Super Bowl was held at MetLife Stadium, just outside the city.
She added that the vast majority of her clients over the last two years had been women arrested in massage parlors.

Ms. Swenstein said that Mr. Vance’s move on Wednesday would likely “have reverberations for sex workers and trafficking survivors well outside of New York City in feeling less stigmatized.” She commended the district attorney for having formulated its policy after talking to sex workers and others with relevant experience.

Mr. Vance’s office had been in the practice of dismissing prostitution cases after sending those charged to mandatory counseling sessions. Going forward, Mr. Vance’s statement said, such counseling sessions would be provided only on a voluntary basis.

Sex workers have been fighting for decriminalization for decades. But the 2019 formation of Decrim NY, a coalition of organizations that support the decriminalization of prostitution, represented a turning point for the movement, with the organization helping to lobby lawmakers for the full decriminalization of sex work.

In New York City, those calls have grown louder. Last month, Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, called on the state to end criminal penalties for sex workers.

“The communities hit hardest by the continued criminalization of sex work and human trafficking are overwhelmingly LGBTQ, they are people of color, and they are undocumented immigrants,” Ms. McCray said at the time. “Sex work is a means of survival for many in these marginalized groups.”

Declining to prosecute prostitution and other related crimes has also been a focus of the candidates to replace Mr. Vance, who announced in March that he would not run for re-election. The majority have said that they would halt the prosecutions if elected."

for rolling back Fosta/Sesta.

In Europe prostitution is not illegal. Trafficking women and exploiting underage women are illegal. Law enforcement focus on those crimes.

Hopefully more and more DAs in America will announce this policy publicly.

Whereas the NY change is simply a change in policy by the DA and doesn't require any new laws. Anyway, it's a start.

Actually in most of the western, non muslim world, even in countries with no "separation of church and state" where the Church (mainly the Catholic Church) actually runs things, we still have mainly legalized prostitution.

 
I agree this "policy" which is not even codified into law, is a step in the right direction, but only a tiny one. It appears to apply mainly to street walkers and MP workers. Like I said, it's still a step in the right direction but let's not sprain our shoulders patting ourselves on the back just yet.

I agree its not a complete victory.  If the Feds said they wouldn't enforce FOSTA/SESTA, would you trust them?  Lol

Tiiiiny step in the right direction, but their idea of "offering help" is arresting sex workers IN ORDER TO offer resources and social work services - which means setting up stings to target sex workers and clients will not stop.

So does that mean AMP busts and arrests continue by LE, but charges ultimately dismissed? Have avoided AMPs in NYC for years because narrowly avoided being in raided AMP few years ago and continued headlines on AMP raids. Used to be my favorite. Switched to agencies. Would love to go back.

Keep in mind that while they will not prosecute the providers, they WILL prosecute the customers. So in theory that lowers the provider's risk but increases the client's. I would hate to run into a provider who takes advantage of the fact that the risk now bears solely on the John.

I don't like to see DA's pick and choose which laws to enforce, even though I think laws against sex work are an unwarranted interference in individual sovereignty.  Hopefully the law will be changed.

tell you the most about what to expect.

 
This is just election politics I suspect. It's also clearly confused unless McCray is actually claiming human trafficking is okay in her view. Though I suspect what she means is that she is clueless about the difference between being a sex worker and being trafficked.

 
I also found the start a bit of a head scratcher: "Many of the cases he moved to dismiss dated to the 1970s and 1980s".  Really? They have cases still open for turning tricks going back up to 50 years and they have not actually prosecuted or dropped them already? Just what have they been doing with these cases?

 
As other's noted, there does seem to be the same shift to targeting the demand side here. That does have the implication that it will be easier for LE to get the workers to turn on their clients -- perhaps working with LE. It also flies in the face of the claim this activity is needed for survival of the most marginalized. It doesn't matter if you don't arrest them if you take their money away. They now starve rather than getting to eat bad publicly funded food in jail.

 
So seems like all the halmarks of thoughtless political posturing.

Can't rule out election politics, but didn't Vance state that he's not running for re-election?

Yes, he stated he's not running. Of course, that means that whoever get in there next can turn around and decide to start prosecuting these cases again.