President Trump signs law aimed at sex ads on Backpage

Richard Ruelas
The Republic |
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This screen shot from the Canadian version of Backpage on April 6, 2018, contains what appears to be a notice from federal authorities that the website has been seized.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed into law a bill that was originally aimed at shutting down the sex ads on, the classified advertising website seized last week by federal authorities as part of prostitution charges against its Arizona-based founders.

The bill, called the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, received praise from anti-sex trafficking advocates. It also has brought warnings from free-speech advocates who say it will have unintended consequences for seemingly innocent websites.

The sponsors of the bill, which passed the House in February, made no secret that its target was Backpage, the classified advertising website started in Phoenix by the former executives of the weekly tabloid newspaper New Times.

In a statement Wednesday, Arizona Sen. John McCain said the legislation "delivers long-overdue changes to the law that for too long has protected websites like from being held accountable for enabling human trafficking."

What the new law does

The bill, which passed both the House and Senate with little opposition, makes it illegal for someone to use a website “with the intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person….”

The law would impose a maximum 25-year sentence for the operators of a website that promoted the prostitution of five or more persons or showed a “reckless disregard” that its website facilitated sex trafficking

It also allows people who assert they were trafficked on websites to sue those websites civilly. The law contains a provision, flagged as unconstitutional by the Justice Department, that makes it retroactive.

The bill was meant to close a loophole in a 1996 law that protected websites from liability for content posted by others. It was intended to target negative reviews on travel websites or offensive comments under news stories.

But Backpage cited that law, called the Communications Decency Act, to argue that it wasn't responsible for the content of its ads, which advocates and law enforcement said were thinly-disguised ads for prostitution.

Lacey, Larkin remain in custody

Jim Larkin (left) and Michael Lacey

The bill's signing comes days after Backpage was seized by federal authorities. It's co-founders, Michael Lacey and James Larkin, were charged with multiple counts of facilitating prostitution. They also were indicted on charges of money laundering.

Five other Backpage executives also were charged with prostitution-related charges, according to the indictment that was unsealed on Monday. All of those executives were released on their own recognizance while they await trial.

Lacey and Larkin remain in federal custody, pending detention hearings. Lacey's hearing was scheduled for Wednesday and Larkin's for Thursday.

The government wants each released with electronic monitoring, fearing they could use their sizeable financial assets to have luxurious lifestyles as fugitives in other countries.

Cindy McCain: Law is still needed

Cindy McCain, wife of Sen. John McCain, and an advocate against sex trafficking, said in an interview last week that law was still needed, despite the seizure of Backpage. 

“The reason we need SESTA is so that the victims who were sold on Backpage, Craiglist and others can have restitution,” Cindy McCain said.

MORE: Cindy and John McCain laud Backpage seizure

She had said hoped to attend the signing ceremony. But, in a text message on Wednesday, said she had remained in Arizona.

Had she attended, she would been alongside Trump, who has disparaged her husband, including questioning whether his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam made him a war hero.

McCain and her daughter, Meghan McCain, have taken to airwaves and social media to criticize Trump's comments about the senior senator from Arizona, who is fighting brain cancer.

But McCain said Trump was a supporter of anti-sex trafficking measures, such as this law.

“He’s on our side on this,” she said.

How Backpage evolved

Backpage started as the literal back page of the New Times, filled with classified ads. Lacey and Larkin, the former New Times executives who sold the newspaper chain in 2012, retained the lucrative interest in the Backpage website.

The site became dominated by adult-oriented advertising that police, prosecutors and advocates said were solicitations for prostitution. The adult ads were among the few the website charged users to post.

A U.S. Senate report released in January 2017 contained internal e-mails from the company that showed its operators edited ads and created a list of disallowed terms that seemed indicative of prostitution.

The Senate report concluded that such actions showed Backpage knew its website was used to facilitate prostitution.

Backpage shut down its adult section the day the report was released, just as Lacey and Larkin appeared — under subpoena — to testify before the Senate committee. Both men refused to answer questions.

Advocates and prosecutors have alleged that Backpage was used to sell underage girls and that women sold through the ads were coerced into acts of prostitution, elevating the crime from prostitution to the federal crime of sex trafficking.

Will Senate 'regret' passing the bill?

But as the measure passed the Senate, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, said he feared the measure was overly broad and would have unintended consequences. He also said it would move the online sex trafficking trade to the “dark web,” where police and prosecutors cannot track it.

“I believe this bill, which will clearly pass, will be something that the United States Senate will come to deeply regret,” Wyden said shortly before the vote.

The bill, in a provision flagged as unconstitutional by the Justice Department, also allows prosecution if the conduct occurred before its enactment.

In a brief sent to a House committee, Stephen Boyd, an assistant attorney general, wrote that the language “raises a serious constitutional concern" since it punishes acts committed before the law was enacted.

According to the Senate report and court documents, Backpage staked out its opportunity to dominate the market for adult ads after competitor Craigslist stopped taking those ads under pressure from the government and activists.

The legislation clarifies that the 1996 law that allowed websites to edit or moderate user content without making them liable for it could not also be a shield for facilitating prostitution.

Backpage used that law to assert that it was not responsible for the ads on its website because it didn’t write them.

Judges in various states agreed that the law provided such immunity.



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