Mann Act

thumb|Newspaper clip: "Wanted sixty thousand girls to take the place of 60,000 white slaves who will die this year"

The Mann Act, previously called the White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910, is a United States federal law, passed June 25, 1910 (ch. 395, ; codified as amended at ). It is named after Congressman James Robert Mann of Illinois.

In its original form, the act made it a felony to engage in interstate or foreign commerce transport of "any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose". Its primary stated intent was to address prostitution, immorality, and human trafficking, particularly where trafficking was for the purposes of prostitution. It was one of several acts of protective legislation aimed at moral reform during the Progressive Era. In practice, its ambiguous language about "immorality" resulted in it being used to criminalize even consensual sexual behavior between adults. It was amended by Congress in 1978 and again in 1986 to limit its application to transport for the purpose of prostitution or other illegal sexual acts.

Background and motivation

In the 19th century, many cities in the United States had designated legally protected areas of prostitution. Increased urbanization, as well as greater numbers of young women entering the workforce, led to greater flexibility in courtship without supervision. In this changing social sphere in the mid-1800s, concern over "white slavery" began. This term referred to women kidnapped for the purposes of prostitution and derives from Charles Sumner's 1847 description of the Barbary slave trade.

Numerous communities appointed vice commissions to investigate the extent of local prostitution, whether prostitutes participated in it willingly or were forced into it, and the degree to which it was organized by any cartel-type organizations. The second significant action at the local level was to close the brothels and the red-light districts. From 1910 to 1913, city after city changed previously tolerant approaches and forced the closing of their brothels. Opposition to openly practiced prostitution had been growing steadily throughout the last decades of the 19th century. The federal government's response was the Mann Act. The purpose of the act was to make it a crime to "transport or cause to be transported, or aid to assist in obtaining transportation for" or to "persuade, induce, entice, or coerce" a woman to travel. Many of the changes that occurred after 1900 were a result of tensions between social ideals and practical realities. Family form and functions changed in response to a complex set of circumstances that were the effects of economic class and ethnicity.

Rescuing sex trafficked young women

Suffrage activists, especially Harriet Burton Laidlaw and Rose Livingston, took up the concerns. They worked in New York City's Chinatown and in other cities to rescue young white and Chinese girls from forced prostitution, and helped pass the Mann Act to make interstate sex trafficking a federal crime.

Conspiracy narrative

According to historian Mark Thomas Connelly, "a group of books and pamphlets appeared announcing a startling claim: a pervasive and depraved conspiracy was at large in the land, brutally trapping and seducing American girls into lives of enforced prostitution, or 'white slavery'. These white-slave tracts began to circulate around 1909." Such narratives often misleadingly portrayed innocent girls "victimized by a huge, secret and powerful conspiracy controlled by foreigners"

Some contemporaries did question the idea of abduction and foreign control of prostitution through cartels. For example, noted radical and feminist Emma Goldman observed, "Whether our reformers admit it or not, the economic and social inferiority of woman is responsible for prostitution."

The 1948 prosecution of Frank LaSalle for abducting Florence Sally Horner is believed to have been an inspiration for Vladimir Nabokov in writing his novel Lolita. Humbert Humbert, the narrator, at one point explicitly refers to LaSalle.

The Mann Act has also been used by the U.S. federal government to prosecute polygamists such as Mormon fundamentalists. Bigamy is illegal in the U.S. and all states have antipolygamy laws. Colorado City, Arizona; Hildale, Utah; Bountiful, British Columbia, northern Mexico are historic locations of several Mormon sects that practiced polygamy, although The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has expressly forbidden polygamy since the start of the 20th century. Sect leaders and individuals have been charged under the Mann Act when "wives" are transported across the Utah–Arizona state line or the U.S.–Canadian and U.S.–Mexican borders., an all-white jury convicted Bella Moore, a mixed race woman from New York, for the "compulsory prostitution" of two white women, Alice Milton and Belle Woods, using the Mann Act.

|| Jack Johnson ||1913||Convicted (pardoned in 2018)|| In October and November 1912, boxer Jack Johnson was arrested twice under the Mann Act. It was generally acknowledged that the arrests were racially motivated. A posthumous presidential pardon was granted in 2018 by President Donald Trump.

||Farley Drew Caminetti ||1913|| Convicted || Caminetti and Maury Diggs took their mistresses from Sacramento, California to Reno, Nevada. Their wives informed the police, and both men were arrested in Reno. Caminetti v. United States expanded Mann Act prosecutions from prostitution to non-commercial extramarital sex.

|| William I. Thomas ||1918||Acquitted ||Pioneering sociologist William I. Thomas's academic career at the University of Chicago was irreversibly damaged after he was arrested under the Mann Act when caught in the company of Mrs. Granger, whose husband was an army officer with the American forces in France. Thomas was acquitted at trial.

|Fred Toney

|1918

|Convicted

|Toney, a professional baseball player, pleaded guilty to traveling with a woman, whom he falsely claimed was his wife, from Louisville, Kentucky to Cincinnati, Ohio where they lived together while he played for the Cincinnati Reds. He was sentenced to four months in jail.

|| Frank Lloyd Wright || 1926||Charges dropped || In October 1926, Wright and his future wife, Olga Lazovich Hinzenburg were accused of violating the Mann Act and he was arrested in Minnetonka, Minnesota.

||George Barker||1940||Charges dropped||The British poet was arrested crossing a state border with his lover Canadian author Elizabeth Smart in 1940. She described the arrest in her book By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.

|| Charlie Chaplin || 1944|| Acquitted ||Chaplin met Joan Barry, age 24, in 1941. He signed her to a $75-a-week contract for a film he was putting together, and she became his mistress. By mid-1942, Chaplin let her contract expire. To send her home, Chaplin paid her train fare to New York which led to his arrest. Chaplin was acquitted of the charges.

|| Rex Ingram ||1949||Convicted||Pleading guilty to the charge of transporting a teenage girl to New York for immoral purposes, the actor was sentenced to eighteen months in jail. He served just ten months of his sentence, but the incident had a serious impact on his career for the next six years.

||Frank La Salle||1950||Convicted|| La Salle was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 30 to 35 years in prison under the Mann Act for abducting and raping Florence Sally Horner during a 21-month period while traveling from New Jersey to California.

||Kid Cann||1959||Convicted/<br /> Acquitted on appeal||Cann, who was an organized crime figure from Minneapolis, Minnesota, was prosecuted and convicted for transporting a prostitute from Chicago to Minnesota. His conviction was later overturned on appeal. Cann was later prosecuted and convicted of offering a $25,000 bribe to a juror at his Mann Act trial.

|| Charles Manson ||1960||Charges dropped||Manson took two prostitutes from California to New Mexico to work.

|| Chuck Berry ||1962||Convicted||In January 1962, Berry was sentenced to three years in prison for offenses under the Mann Act when he had transported a girl, age 14, across state lines.

|| Tony Alamo|| 2008 || Convicted||The former American religious leader was arrested under the Mann Act in September 2008. He was subsequently convicted on 10 counts of interstate transportation of minors for illegal sexual purposes, rape, sexual assault, and contributing to the delinquency of minors.

|| Brian David Mitchell ||2010||Convicted ||Former street preacher and pedophile; convicted in 2010 of interstate kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor across state lines in connection with the 2002 abduction of Elizabeth Smart; currently serving a life sentence in federal prison.

|| Jack Schaap || 2012 ||Convicted || Pastor at mega-church First Baptist Church and Chancellor of Hyles–Anderson College, pleaded guilty to transportation of a minor, age 16, across state lines to have sex with her. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

|| R. Kelly || 2021 ||Convicted || Singer/actor who has faced multiple sexual abuse trials. At his first federal trial, he was charged with:

one count of racketeering comprising 14 predicate acts against six females. Six of the acts were Mann Act offenses against four of the victims. He was found guilty of racketeering on the basis that 12 of the 14 acts were proved, including five Mann Act offenses against three of the victims.
eight Mann Act offenses against two of the victims, corresponding to four of the racketeering predicate acts; he was found guilty on all counts.

|| Ghislaine Maxwell || 2021 ||Convicted ||Socialite/publishing heiress charged with sex trafficking of minors for Jeffrey Epstein. In December 2021, a jury found her guilty on five of six counts involving sex trafficking of minors, and in June 2022, she was sentenced to 20 years. Her conviction and sentence were upheld on appeal.

Individuals considered for prosecution under the Act

Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, Islamist cleric, and al-Qaeda organizer, was investigated for violations of the Mann Act, authorities primarily wanting to arrest him for his ties to the 9/11 hijackers, but left the United States for Yemen before he could be detained.
Dušan Popov, a World War II Allied double agent with a "James Bond" lifestyle, was threatened with arrest under the Mann Act.
Individuals associated with the Emperors Club VIP prostitution ring, one of whose more prominent clients was Eliot Spitzer while he was governor of New York.
Individuals associated with the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), such as Warren Jeffs and Merril Jessop have refused to answer questions during depositions and court hearings, citing the 5th Amendment, over concerns of self-incrimination related to "potential state investigation still ongoing, as well as criminal investigations under the Mann Act out of the U.S. Attorney's Office."

Mann Act case decisions by the United States Supreme Court

Hoke v. United States, . The Court held that Congress could not regulate prostitution per se, as that was strictly the province of the states. Congress could, however, regulate interstate travel for purposes of prostitution or "immoral purposes".
Athanasaw v. United States, . The Court decided that the law was not limited strictly to prostitution, but to "debauchery" as well.
In a 1915 ruling, the Court determined that it is not impossible for a victim of the Act to be charged with conspiracy under specific circumstances. The requirements for conspiracy by a victim of the Act were limited in a 1932 ruling.
Caminetti v. United States, . In 1917, the Court decided that the Mann Act did not apply strictly to purposes of prostitution, but to other noncommercial consensual sexual liaisons; thus consensual extramarital sex fell within the category of "immoral sex".
In 1932, the Court ruled that consent by the victim to their own transportation does not constitute conspiracy or culpability under the Act.
Cleveland v. United States, . The Court decided that a man can be prosecuted under the Mann Act even when married to the woman if the marriage is polygamous; therefore, in 1946, polygamous marriage was determined to be an "immoral purpose".
Bell v. United States, . The Court decided that simultaneous transportation of two women across state lines constituted only one violation of the Mann Act, not two violations.
The Court affirmed that a victim can be compelled to testify against a spouse who violated the Act, in exception to the common law spousal privilege rule.

Congressional amendments to the law

In 1978, Congress updated the act's definition of "transportation" and added protections against commercial sexual exploitation for minors.

Congress amended the law in 1986 to make it gender-neutral and to fix its ambiguous language. In particular, as part of a larger 1986 bill, the Child Sexual Abuse and Pornography Act of 1986, focused on criminalizing various aspects of child pornography, the Mann Act was revised by replacing the ambiguous "debauchery" and "any other immoral purpose" with the more specific "any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense".

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! style=" border-bottom:1.5px solid black"|Date of Enactment

! style=" border-bottom:1.5px solid black"|Public Law Number

! style=" border-bottom:1.5px solid black"|U.S. Statute Citation

! style=" border-bottom:1.5px solid black"|U.S. Legislative Bill

! style=" border-bottom:1.5px solid black"|U.S. Presidential Administration

| style="border-bottom:1px solid gray; background:#F5F5F5;"|June 25, 1948

| style="border-bottom:1px solid gray; background:#F5F5F5; text-align:center;"|P.L. 80-772