Twenty-One Sex Trafficking Victims Won’t See Cases Consolidated in Federal Court

Sex trafficking victims from throughout the U.S. who have filed lawsuits against various hotels will not have their 21 cases combined, according to a decision by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Legislation.

The decision was announced on Friday, Feb. 7 by the panel, which determined the lawsuits are too diverse to be transferred to centralized action in the Southern District of Ohio. Even though each lawsuit alleges the hotels failed to train their staff to identify and report suspected human trafficking, the circumstances, hotels, geographic locations, time periods and indications of sex trafficking were all different, said the panel.

The plaintiffs include sex trafficking victims who say the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act was violated by the hotels, which allegedly are liable for damages.

The law says that responsibility and liability of human trafficking extends to people who should have known illegal deviant activity was occurring upon their property. Sex trafficking is a form of modern day slavery, also known as forced labor.

Six of the cases originated in Ohio, and named defendants included Best Western, Wyndham, Red Roof Inn, Hilton, Marriott and many parent companies of hotel chains. Human traffickers would book rooms at the hotels, which allegedly would turn a blind eye to the indications illicit activity was taking place on site.

At least 38 of the 45 named hotel franchisors, franchisees, owners and operators opposed centralizing the cases.

Some of the plaintiffs had preferred the cases be consolidated in the Southern District of Texas, the Eastern District of New York or the District of Minnesota. Four plaintiffs did not wish to see the cases consolidated at all.

According to the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School, cases may be consolidated to save costs when causes are of a like nature and involve a common question of law.

While all 21 human trafficking lawsuits allege violations of the Trafficking Victim Protection Re-Authorization Act, the panel found there were too many differences in the cases to consolidate them.

Allegations Made by Sex Trafficking Victims

One Ohio plaintiff said she was homeless and jobless when she fell prey to a man she met online. According to CantonRep.com, the woman thought she was going to date the man, but he forced her to provide sex for money at a variety of Columbus hotels.

According to the woman’s lawsuit, the evidence of human trafficking included a number of bottles of lubricants, boxes of condoms, piles of cash, and an unusually high number of requests for towels and bedding. At one point, she alleges a member of the hotel’s cleaning staff ignored her pleas for help and looked the other way when she was helplessly tied to a guest room bed.

Other plaintiffs tell similar stories of hotel staff ignoring the obvious signs of abuse occurring among human trafficking victims. Hotels make their money by renting out rooms, and some hotel managers allegedly don’t want to make enemies of potential customers, even if those customers are engaged in illegal, harmful activity.

In addition to federal law mandating the reporting of human trafficking, many states have their own laws. Florida recently enacted a law that requires hotel, motel and massage parlor owners to train their employees on detecting and reporting sex trafficking operations. The Florida Attorney General’s office says the state is third in the nation in the number of phone calls made to the National Human Trafficking Hotline.