Sex worker measure splits DOJ, Baptists

A seemingly uncontroversial bill introduced by the late Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has stuck a wedge between a powerful conservative religious group and the Department of Justice.

The bill, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, passed the House in a 405-2 vote in December but faces an uncertain future in the Senate. The bill marks a rare instance of the Bush administration opposing a major conservative religious group over legal policy.

{mosads}It would authorize the use of federal resources and create an office within the Department of State to fight the trafficking of sex workers in the U.S. and overseas.

The Southern Baptist Convention , one of the most influential religious groups in conservative politics, has championed the legislation, pitting it against not only Justice but the conservative Heritage Foundation .

The Convention wields considerable force in Republican politics. There are about 16 million Southern Baptists, making it the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, according to the Convention.  

Barrett Duke, vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told The Hill that his organization “stand[s] 100 percent behind this bill.”

He said the Lantos measure would provide federal assistance to state and local law enforcement officials trying to curb a practice so entrenched and widespread that it is sometimes called the “world’s oldest profession.”

The Department of Justice, however, has raised a slew of objections. In a 13-page letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski cited concerns with 27 sections of the legislation.

He also shared those concerns with the chairmen and ranking Republicans of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and their House counterparts.

The bill would “substantially compromise the Department of Justice’s successful anti-trafficking strategy and its effective implementations,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Laurence Rothenberg said in a statement.

“The federal government should not be diverted from its core anti-trafficking mission against crimes involving force, fraud, or coercion and child victims. States are better situated to combat adult prostitution.”

Policy experts at Heritage charge that it would overextend federal law enforcement by tasking it with policing small local crime.

They’re also concerned about the trend of federalizing more and more areas of the law, which they argue contributes to the expansion of big government.

Brian Walsh and Andrew M. Grossman of Heritage wrote in a legal memo that the bill “trivialize[s] the seriousness of actual human trafficking by equating it with run-of-the-mill sex crimes — such as pimping, pandering and prostitution — that are neither international nor interstate in nature.”

“Saddling federal authorities with the enormous job of fighting local sex crimes would divert them from their own anti-trafficking efforts,” they wrote.

{mospagebreak}Walsh and Grossman also argue that crime data from New York City and Boston from the 1990s and early 2000s show that local police “make impressive gains against crime” when given primary responsibility.

Federal responsibility often reduces the accountability of local officials because they seek to “pass the buck to federal law enforcement authorities,” according to Heritage.

Despite growing opposition from fellow conservatives, the Southern Baptist Convention is standing firm.  

{mosads}Duke draws analogies to the Civil War-era issue of slavery.

“One hundred and [fifty] years ago we fought slavery as if it was a state’s right and we found out it was not,” he said, emphasizing that human trafficking is a nation- and worldwide problem that needs to be solved.

The differing views have boiled down to a clash over whether the trafficking bill violates the Constitution.

“The Constitution says that federal responses sometimes are necessary,” said Duke. “We have had examples of [federal] laws that have trumped state rights.”

But Heritage thinkers believe the Constitution does not empower the federal government to intervene in what are essentially local matters.

“Federal criminal law should be used only to combat problems reserved to the national government in the Constitution,” wrote Walsh and Grossman, who argued that the Founding Fathers expressly assigned for federal enforcement crimes such as counterfeiting, not local prostitution.  

Other groups also have sided with the Department of Justice and Heritage.

The National District Attorneys Association and the Fraternal Order of Police have written to the Senate Judiciary Committee to object to the bill.

The legislation has been referred to Senate Judiciary, but its fate is unclear. Growing opposition will likely place various obstacles in its path.

On the House side, only Reps. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Paul Broun (R-Ga.) voted against the measure in December.

It was one of the last bills introduced by Lantos, who died in February.