Mann Act

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The United States White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910 prohibited so-called white slavery. It also banned the interstate transport of females for “immoral purposes”. Its primary stated intent was to address prostitution and immorality. The act is better known as the Mann Act, after James Robert Mann, an American lawmaker.

The first person prosecuted under the act was heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, who encouraged a woman to leave a brothel and travel with him to another state. Though he later married the girl, and took her away from a brothel, he was nevertheless prosecuted and sentenced to a year in prison.

Pioneering sociologist William I. Thomas's academic career at the University of Chicago was irreversibly damaged after he was arrested under the act when caught in the company of one Mrs Granger, the wife of an army officer with the American forces in France, although he was later acquitted in court.

British film actor Charles Chaplin was prosecuted in 1944 by Federal authorities for Mann Act charges related to his involvement with actress Joan Barry. Chaplin was acquitted of the charges, but the trial permanently damaged his public image in the US, and contributed to his departure for Switzerland in the early 1950's.

[edit] Mann Act case decisions by the United States Supreme Court

Hoke v. United States (227 US 308, 322) (1913). 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 (227 U.S. 326, 328) (1913). The Court decided that the law was not limited strictly to prostitution, but to “debauchery” as well.
Caminetti v. United States (242 U.S. 470, 484-85) (1917). The Court decided that the Mann Act applied not strictly to purposes of prostitution, but to other noncommercial consensual sexual liaisons. Thus consensual extramarital sex falls within the genre of “immoral sex”.
Gebardi v. United States (287 US 112) (1932). The Court held that the statutory intent was not to punish a woman's acquiescence; therefore, consent by the woman does not expose her to liability.
Cleveland v. United States (329 U.S. 14, 16-17) (1946). The Court decided that a person can be prosecuted under the Mann Act even when married to the woman if the marriage is polygamous. Thus polygamous marriage was determined to be an “immoral purpose”.
Bell v. United States (349 U.S. 81, 83) (1955). The Supreme Court decided that simultaneous transportation of two women across state lines constituted only one violation of the Mann Act, not two violations.