Cleveland v. United States and polygamy and polygyny and Caminetti and Mann Act and White Slave Trade

At issue in this case was whether the 1910 Mann Act, which made it a crime to transport a woman over state lines for the purpose of "prostitution, debauchery, or other immoral purpose" was violated by the transportation over state lines of plural wives of Fundamentalist Mormons. The Court affirmed the Court of Appeals and held (6-3) that the Mann Act was violated by such conduct. The dissenters contended that this expansive and strained reading of the Mann Act was unsupported by the text of the statute.

The Mann Act and the White Slave Trade

One of the most curious chapters of America's long history of painful and almost comical treatment of matters sexual was the passage of the Mann Act in 1910. The Act has been dealt with for the first time in a book-length narrative in the recently released Crossing over the Line: Legislating Morality and the Mann Act (2004). In order to understand the context of the case, we would have to understand the nature of early twentieth century prostitution as well as the history of the Progressive Movement. Suffice it to say that at the turn of the 20th century there was a growing fear not only that immigrant girls were being brought into this country to satisfy the sexual demands of rich and powerful men, but that countless native white women were being held against their will in conditions approaching servitude, to be sexually exploited by men. The issue had such a tremendous appeal to legislators because of the dominant tenor of the times (i.e., the Progressive Movement wanted to eradicate "immorality" from the heart of American cities) as well as the slightly suggestive salacious images of white women being forced into various sexual acts. The dominant sense of the time was that white women wouldn't voluntarily choose prostitution; therefore, those who were involved in prostitution were probably being coerced into it.

Thus the Mann Act was spawned. It forbade, under penalty of up to five years imprisonment, the transportation in interstate commerce [thus making it a fit subject for Congressional legislation] of "any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose." The question before the Court was whether petitioners, members of a breakaway Mormon group called Fundamentalist Mormons, could be convicted of violation of the Act by transporting at least one plural wife across state lines either for the purpose of cohabiting with her, or for the purpose of aiding another member of the "cult" (as the Court called it) in such a project.

Decision

Justice Douglas, writing for the majority, treated the issue as a matter of statutory interpretation. The question was, in his judgment, whether the activity charged fit into the "any other immoral purpose" of the statute. The Mann Act had already received an expansive construal in the Caminetti case (242 US 470) by its application to unmarried people who crossed state lines and had sex, and Justice Douglas stated that the Court was not ready to reconsider this precedent in deciding Cleveland. Thus the Act, "while primarily aimed at the use of interstate commerce for the purposes of commercialized sex, is not restricted to that end."

After articulating this approach, the conclusion quickly followed: "We conclude, moreover, that polygamous practices are not excluded from the Act." The Court quoted the Reynolds case from 1878, regarding the illegality of plural marriage, and went on to lambaste polygamy as a "notorious example of promiscuity." Since it was not absolutely clear that the Act was confined to commercialized sexual vice, it could reasonably be extended to cover the practice at issue. The accused intended to perform, and performed, the act which the statute condemns: transportation of a woman for the purpose of making her his plural wife or cohabiting with her as such.*

[*Justice Wiley Rutledge wrote a concurring opinion dealing with the subject of when Congressional silence on an Act amounts to acquiescence in the Act. He concluded in this case that three decades of Congressional silence on Caminetti probably didn't amount to acquiescence, but since the Court had not overruled Caminetti in the meantime, it should still have precedential value.]

In Dissent

Two Justices dissented because they believed the Court read the Mann Act too broadly (Black and Jackson). A more searching, and even startling dissent was written by Justice Murphy. It is startling because of the anthropological approach he took to the question of plural marriages. His point was that many cultures for thousands of years had not only countenanced but encouraged polygyny and polyandry. "We must recognize, then, that polygyny, like other forms of marriage, is basically a cultural institution rooted deeply in the religious beliefs and social mores of those socieites in which it appears." Even though Justice Douglas argued that polygamy is "a notorious example of promiscuity," Justice Murphy conlcuded that polygamy is simply not in the same category as prostitution or "debauchery." He pointed out that when polygamists were meant to bve excluded from the protection of the laws Congress mentions them specifically. No mention of polygamy can be divined in this statute. He concludes, "The result here reached is but another consequence of this Court's long-continued failure to recognize that the White Slave Traffic Act...is aimed soley at the diabolical interstate and international trade in white girls...."

Conclusion

Before the Mann Act was curtailed in the mid- 1980s, its net had ensnared such famous people as Chuch Berry and the heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, both of whom dared to consort with white women. Berry served two years in prison under the Mann Act for his "crime." Now, nearly 100 years after its passage, the Mann Act stands as a tribute to America's confused and tortured attempts to deal with the subject of sexuality. The Mann Act was not the last, though it may have been the most glaring, of legislative failures to deal with matters sexual.