Hotels and sex trafficking: how survivors bring claims

Legal accuracy check

Chris Schroeder, Esq.

Florida Bar #520381 · D.C. Bar

First published October 5, 2026 · Last checked October 5, 2026

How pages are checked

How trafficking claims against hotels work

Hotels and motels appear in many sex trafficking cases because traffickers rent rooms to hold people and sell them. Survivors have used a federal statute to sue the businesses behind those rooms. This page explains that claim; the institutions hub lists the other kinds of institution we cover, and our page on sex trafficking covers trafficking itself.

The federal civil remedy

The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, usually called the TVPRA, makes sex trafficking a federal crime in 18 U.S.C. 1591: using force, fraud or coercion to cause an adult to engage in a commercial sex act, or causing anyone under 18 to do so. Section 1595(a) lets a victim sue in federal court for damages and attorney fees. The defendant can be “the perpetrator” or “whoever knowingly benefits, or attempts or conspires to benefit, financially or by receiving anything of value from participation in a venture which that person knew or should have known has engaged in an act in violation of this chapter.” Congress added that beneficiary language on December 23, 2008, and the “attempts or conspires” wording on January 5, 2023.

That second category is how hotels are sued. A hotel company is not usually accused of being the trafficker. It is accused of profiting from a venture it knew or should have known involved trafficking, usually through room rentals, while staff saw signs and did nothing.

What a beneficiary claim has to show

The Eleventh Circuit, which covers Alabama, Florida and Georgia, set out the elements in Doe #1 v. Red Roof Inns, Inc., 21 F.4th 714 (11th Cir. 2021). The plaintiff must plausibly allege that the defendant “(1) knowingly benefited, (2) from taking part in a common undertaking or enterprise involving risk and potential profit, (3) that undertaking or enterprise violated the TVPRA as to the plaintiff, and (4) the defendant had constructive or actual knowledge that the undertaking or enterprise violated the TVPRA as to the plaintiff.” The court rejected the hotel franchisors’ argument that a survivor must show the defendant knowingly helped the trafficking, because that would make the statute’s “should have known” language meaningless.

Other circuits frame the participation element differently. In G.G. v. Salesforce.com, Inc., 76 F.4th 544 (7th Cir., August 3, 2023), a case about a software vendor to a website that advertised a trafficked 13-year-old, the Seventh Circuit held that a plaintiff can show participation through “a continuous business relationship” between the defendant and the trafficker, from which a court or jury may infer a “tacit agreement.” Federal trial courts in other circuits have applied that idea to hotels that rented rooms to the same trafficker over long periods.

State law. Survivors often add state-law claims, such as negligence and premises liability, against the hotel’s owner or operator. Those depend on the state and on how much control each defendant had over the property.

Who can be held responsible

A branded hotel usually involves several companies: the brand or franchisor, the franchisee that owns or leases the property, sometimes a separate management company, and the staff who work the front desk. Each is analyzed separately.

Owners and operators. Claims are strongest where staff had direct dealings with the trafficker. In Ricchio v. McLean, 853 F.3d 553 (1st Cir., April 5, 2017), the First Circuit revived a survivor’s claims against a Massachusetts motel’s owner and the couple who ran it. The complaint alleged that she was held captive there for several days, that the operators had done business with the trafficker before and wanted to again, and that one of them ignored her plea for help. The court held those allegations plausibly showed the operators knowingly benefited by renting the room.

Franchisors. Brands are harder to reach. In Red Roof, four women alleged they were trafficked at two hotels in the Atlanta area and sued the franchisors Choice Hotels International, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts and Microtel Inn & Suites Franchising, among others. The court accepted that royalties based on room revenue “may suggest that the franchisors financially benefitted from renting hotel rooms to the Does’ sex traffickers,” but held the women had not plausibly alleged the franchisors took part in the trafficking ventures. On inspections and online reviews mentioning sex work, it wrote: “observing something is not the same as participating in it.” Dismissal of the claims against the three franchisors was affirmed, including the state-law negligence claims, because under Georgia law a franchisor owes patrons a duty only if it keeps a right to control day-to-day operations. The appeal did not decide the claims against the individual hotels.

Outside the Eleventh Circuit, some trial courts have let claims against brands proceed. Two examples:

• In Doe (K.R.D.) v. Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. (N.D. Cal. No. 5:24-cv-06993), a woman alleges she was trafficked from March 2014 to December 2016, for more than a year of that time out of a San José DoubleTree, and that the franchisee rented rooms to her trafficker despite obvious signs. The defendants argued they shared no common purpose with the trafficker. On September 4, 2025, the court denied their motion to dismiss, holding the complaint stated a claim against the franchisee and adequately alleged that the franchisor, Hilton Domestic Operating Company, is vicariously liable.
• In A.M. v. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc. (S.D. Ohio No. 2:22-cv-3797), Chief Judge Algenon L. Marbley denied Wyndham’s motion to dismiss, transfer or certify an appeal on March 29, 2024.

A ruling on a motion to dismiss decides only that the claims may go forward. It is not a finding that the allegations are true, and we have not confirmed where either case stands now.

The trafficker is a defendant too, and a criminal prosecution can affect timing: section 1595(b) requires a civil case to be paused while a criminal case “arising out of the same occurrence” is pending. Our guide to civil and criminal cases explains how the two interact. Trafficking also happens through massage businesses, covered on our page about massage businesses and spas, and is often arranged online, which our page on online exploitation covers.

Deadline issues for hotel trafficking claims

The federal 10-year rule. Under section 1595(c), a TVPRA civil action must be filed by the later of “10 years after the cause of action arose” or “10 years after the victim reaches 18 years of age, if the victim was a minor at the time of the alleged offense.” Congress added the 10-year limit in 2008 and the age-18 alternative on May 29, 2015. When a claim “arose” in a trafficking case that lasted months or years is a question courts decide case by case.

Survivors trafficked as minors. A separate federal statute, 18 U.S.C. 2255, lets a person who was a victim of listed federal crimes, including sex trafficking under section 1591, while a minor sue with “no time limit.” The statute does not say who may be sued, so whether it reaches a hotel business is a question for a lawyer.

State claims. Negligence and premises claims run on the state’s own, usually shorter, deadlines. Our statute of limitations reference has those by state.

Active litigation involving hotels

Hotel trafficking cases are filed one at a time in federal courts around the country, not as one national case. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation declined to combine them in 2020 because they involved “different alleged sex trafficking ventures, different hotel brands, different owners and employees, different geographic locales, different witnesses, different indicia of sex trafficking, and different time periods,” as the Panel itself summarized that decision in an April 3, 2025 order.

Where to go next

If you are in danger now, call 911. Our page on sex trafficking covers the abuse itself. Many trafficking survivors file under initials or a pseudonym, as most of the plaintiffs in the cases above did; our guide to filing anonymously explains how courts handle that request. How to file a claim walks through a lawsuit step by step, and trauma and healing covers support outside the legal system. If you want a lawyer to look at your own dates, a free, confidential case review costs nothing and commits you to nothing.

Questions we are asked most