In 2000, Congress enacted the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in response to the growing problem of human trafficking. The Act defines human trafficking broadly as the exploitation of an individual for forced labor or a commercial sex act done under force, fraud, or coercion. (Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, Pub. L. No. 106-386, 8 U.S.C. __ 114 Stat. 1464 ‘(2000). Sections 1581, 1583, 1584(a), 1589(a) and (b), 1590(a), and 1591(a) of the TVPA lay out provisions criminalizing specific human trafficking offenses: Peonage, Enticement into slavery, Sale into involuntary servitude, Forced labor, Trafficking with respect to peonage, slavery, involuntary servitude, or forced labor, and Sex trafficking.)
The TVPA has been amended several times. Two relatively recent amendments provide a private right of action for victims under 18 U.S.C. §1595, as well as extraterritorial application to offenses taking place outside the United States under 18 U.S.C. §1596. The most recent circuit court to offer its reading of these provisions is the Ninth Circuit in Keo Ratha v. Phatthana Seafood Co., Ltd., No. 18-55041 (9th Cir. 2022). In that case the panel held, without taking a position on whether the TVPA applied to events occurring abroad, that foreign defendants in TVPRA civil actions cannot be found “present” under §1596 without a showing of either physical presence or purposeful direction of conduct towards the U.S. market. The plaintiffs in Keo Ratha were a group of Cambodian villagers, who brought the suit against two Thai seafood manufacturing companies, Phatthana Seafood and S.S. Frozen, on allegations that the companies subjected them to trafficking and forced labor in inhumane and unsafe conditions at their factories. Id. The plaintiffs also named two U.S.-affiliated companies, Rubicon and Wales, as beneficiary defendants on grounds that they “knowingly benefitted” from the exploitation of the victims owing to their business relationship with the Thai seafood manufacturers, and thus could be found liable under §1595(a). Id.
