The law made it illegal to 'transport any woman or girl' across state lines 'for any immoral purpose.' In 1917, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of two married California men, Drew Caminetti and Maury Diggs, who had gone on a romantic weekend getaway with their girlfriends to Reno, Nevada, and had been arrested. The Congressional committees that debated the Mann Act did not believe that a woman would ever choose to be a prostitute unless she was drugged and held hostage.
Allegedly, women were brought to America for the purpose of being forced into sexual slavery likewise, immigrant men were allegedly luring American girls into prostitution. The outrage over sex work began with a commission appointed in 1907 to investigate the problem of immigrant prostitutes. Congress passes the Mann Act, which was ostensibly aimed at keeping young women from being lured into prostitution, but really offered a way to make a crime out of many kinds of consensual sexual activity.
