United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 15-2145
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellant,
v.
EDWIN MALDONADO-BURGOS,
Defendant, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Daniel R. Domínguez, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Thompson, Dyk,* and Kayatta,
Circuit Judges.
John Patrick Taddei, Attorney, Appellate Section, Criminal
Division, United States Department of Justice, with whom Leslie R.
Caldwell, Assistant Attorney General, Sung-Hee Suh, Deputy
Assistant Attorney General, Rosa E. Rodríguez-Vélez, United States
Attorney, Nelson J. Perez-Sosa, Assistant United States Attorney,
and Mariana E. Bauza Almonte, Assistant United States Attorney,
were on brief, for appellant.
Eleonora C. Marranzini, Assistant Federal Public Defender,
with whom Eric Alexander Vos, Federal Public Defender, Vivianne M.
Marrero, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Supervisor, Appeals
Section, and Liza L. Rosado-Rodriguez, Research and Writing
Specialist, were on brief, for appellee.
* Of the Federal Circuit, sitting by designation.
December 21, 2016
THOMPSON, Circuit Judge. In this appeal, we are tasked
with deciding whether 18 U.S.C. § 2421(a) — which prohibits
transportation of an individual "in interstate or foreign
commerce, or in any Territory or Possession of the United States"
for purposes of prostitution or other unlawful sexual activity —
applies to transportation that occurs solely within Puerto Rico.
Long ago, we answered this question in the affirmative. See Crespo
v. United States, 151 F.2d 44, 45 (1st Cir. 1945). In a typical
case, this would end our inquiry.
But this case — arising in the wake of Puerto Rico's
post-Crespo transformation from a United States territory to the
"self-governing Commonwealth" that it is today, Puerto Rico v.
Sánchez Valle, 136 S. Ct. 1863, 1874 (2016) — is far from typical.
And, despite the government's arguments to the contrary, we
conclude that our post-Crespo decision in Cordova & Simonpietri
Insurance Agency Inc. v. Chase Manhattan Bank N.A., 649 F.2d 36
(1st Cir. 1981), blazed a trail that we must follow in this case.
Applying Cordova's analytical framework, we hold that § 2421(a)
does not apply to transportation that occurs solely within Puerto
Rico. Accordingly, we affirm the district court's dismissal of
the indictment.
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How the Case Got Here1
The two-count indictment in this case alleges that, on
two separate occasions, the defendant, Edwin Maldonado-Burgos
(Maldonado), transported an eighteen-year-old woman with a severe
mental disability within Puerto Rico with the intent to engage in
sexual activity that was criminal under Puerto Rico law. Maldonado
moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that transportation
occurring solely within Puerto Rico does not violate § 2421(a).
The district court agreed and dismissed the indictment. The
government timely appealed.2
Setting the Stage
This case presents us with a question of statutory
interpretation, which we review de novo. See United States v.
Place, 693 F.3d 219, 227 (1st Cir. 2012). We start with the
statutory text. See United States v. Godin, 534 F.3d 51, 56 (1st
Cir. 2008). Section 2421(a) punishes "[w]hoever knowingly
transports any individual in interstate or foreign commerce, or in
any Territory or Possession of the United States, with intent that
1
In this appeal from the district court's dismissal of an
indictment, we glean the factual background from the well-pleaded
facts in the indictment itself. See United States v. Nippon Paper
Indus., 109 F.3d 1, 2 (1st Cir. 1997).
2
Meanwhile, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico charged Maldonado
in connection with this conduct. At oral argument, his attorney
represented to us that Maldonado has since pled guilty to the
Puerto Rico charges and was awaiting sentencing as of that date.
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such individual engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity
for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense, or
attempts to do so."3 Because neither § 2421(a) nor any other
provision of the Mann Act explicitly mentions Puerto Rico, we are
called upon to decide whether Puerto Rico is a "Territory or
Possession of the United States" under § 2421(a).
Before tackling the merits of this interpretation
controversy, we first briefly recount the evolution of the
relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico.4 In 1898,
following the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico became a territory
of the United States. Sánchez Valle, 136 S. Ct. at 1868. Over
3 Congress originally enacted this prohibition as part of the
Mann Act on June 25, 1910. See White-Slave Traffic (Mann) Act,
Pub. L. No. 61-277, § 2, 36 Stat. 825 (1910) (codified as amended
at 18 U.S.C. §§ 2421-2424). At that time, the Mann Act reached
illicit transportation "in interstate or foreign commerce, or in
any Territory or in the District of Columbia," id., 36 Stat. at
825, and a different provision provided that "the term 'Territory,'
as used in this Act, shall include the district of Alaska, the
insular possessions of the United States, and the Canal Zone," id.
§ 7, 36 Stat. at 827. In 1948, Congress added the term
"Possession," such that the Mann Act covered transportation "in
any Territory or Possession of the United States," Act of June 25,
1948, Pub. L. No. 80-772, 62 Stat. 683, 812 — a phrase that
§ 2421(a) contains today. Congress also scrapped the definition
of territory in 1948 because it concluded that "[n]o definition of
'Territory' [was] necessary to the revised section as it is
phrased." H.R. No. 80-304, at A150 (1947); see also Pub. L. No.
80-722, 62 Stat. at 812. Since then, the Mann Act has not defined
the terms "Territory" or "Possession."
4 This brief history lesson is heavily abridged. For a more
robust backstory, we refer the interested reader to our opinion in
Cordova, 649 F.2d at 39-41.
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the years, Congress gradually increased Puerto Rico's autonomy
over its local affairs, id., but "Congress retained major elements
of sovereignty" over the island, Cordova, 649 F.2d at 39.
Then, in 1950, Congress passed legislation — which later
became part of the Federal Relations Act (FRA), see Act of July 3,
1950, Pub. L. 81-600, § 4, 64 Stat. 319 (codified at 48 U.S.C.
§§ 731b-731e) — that authorized the people of Puerto Rico to adopt
a constitution. See Sánchez Valle, 136 S. Ct. at 1868; Examining
Bd. of Eng'rs, Architects, & Surveyors v. Flores de Otero, 426
U.S. 572, 592-94 (1976). Two years later, the Puerto Rico
Constitution became law when it received congressional approval.
Act of July 3, 1952, Pub. L. No. 82-447, 66 Stat. 327; see Cordova,
649 F.2d at 40. The clear congressional purpose behind "the 1950
and 1952 legislation was to accord to Puerto Rico the degree of
autonomy and independence normally associated with States of the
Union." Examining Bd., 426 U.S. at 594. Reflecting this purpose,
the Puerto Rico Constitution "created a new political entity, the
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico," Sánchez Valle, 136 S. Ct. at 1869 —
"a distinctive, indeed exceptional, status," id. at 1874. See id.
("Congress in 1952 'relinquished its control over [the
Commonwealth's] local affairs[,] grant[ing] Puerto Rico a measure
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of autonomy comparable to that possessed by the States.'" (quoting
Examining Bd., 426 U.S. at 597)).5
The parties dispute the role that this history should
play in our analysis of whether § 2421(a) applies to transportation
that occurs wholly within Puerto Rico. We begin by discussing the
competing precedent that each side urges is applicable to our
analysis.
The government insists that our decision in Crespo
controls. In that case, the defendant was charged with violating
the predecessor to § 2421(a) by transporting women "from one place
to another in Puerto Rico" for purposes of prostitution. Crespo,
151 F.2d at 45. The defendant argued that Congress could not have
intended to reach intra-Puerto Rico transportation and thereby
"intervene in matters of interest only to the people of Puerto
Rico." Id. We disagreed, holding that § 2421(a)'s predecessor
"applie[d] to transportation wholly within Puerto Rico." Id. This
result, we reasoned, was compelled by both the "express terms" of
the statute — which covered "transportation 'in any territory'" —
and the clear statement of congressional purpose reflected in the
5 The events giving rise to this prosecution occurred prior
to the enactment of the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and
Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), 48 U.S.C. §§ 2101-2241, and the
government makes no argument that that legislation should bear on
our analysis.
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committee reports accompanying the passage of the Mann Act, which
provided that the Act was
applicable to the District of Columbia, the territories
and possessions of the United States, including the
Panama Canal Zone, without regard to the crossing of
district, territorial, or state lines, and appl[ied]
within the territories to the same extent as [it]
appl[ied] in cases outside of the territories in
interstate or foreign commerce.
Id. (quoting S. Rep. No. 61-886, at 2 (1910); H.R. Rep. No. 61-
47, at 2 (1909)).
Maldonado counters that Crespo — which was decided
several years before the adoption of the Puerto Rico Constitution
— does not govern the analysis. Instead, he argues that our later
decision in Cordova sets forth the legal framework that controls
this case. In that case, the plaintiffs were an insurance broker
and its president who arranged the procurement of insurance
policies for automobile dealers in Puerto Rico. Cordova, 649 F.2d
at 37. In an attempt to cut out the middlemen, the insurance
company that issued the policies agreed with a bank that was the
ultimate beneficiary of the policies to cancel the policies and
reissue them without using the plaintiffs' brokerage services.
Id. The plaintiffs responded by filing an antitrust action against
the insurance company and the bank. Id. at 37-38.
On appeal from the dismissal of the plaintiffs'
complaint, we were confronted with the issue of whether, for
purposes of the Sherman Act, we must treat Puerto Rico like a state
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or a territory. Id. at 38. The Sherman Act treats territories
differently than states: section 3 of that Act reaches agreements
"in restraint of trade or commerce in any Territory of the United
States," 15 U.S.C. § 3(a); however, the Act's reach is less
expansive when it comes to the states, covering only agreements
"in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states," id.
§ 1. See Cordova, 649 F.2d at 36. In 1937, prior to the adoption
of the Puerto Rico Constitution, the Supreme Court had held that
the term territory in § 3 of the Act did include Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rico v. Shell Co., 302 U.S. 253, 259 (1937).
Yet, notwithstanding Shell Co., we held in Cordova that
§ 3 no longer applied to Puerto Rico. 649 F.2d at 42, 44. In an
opinion authored by then-Judge Breyer, we framed the
particularized inquiry as follows: "whether the Sherman Act's
framers, if aware of Puerto Rico's current constitutional status,
would have intended it to be treated as a 'state' or 'territory'
under the Act." Id. at 39. And, after reviewing the events
culminating in the adoption of the Puerto Rico Constitution and
explaining that this history evidenced "a general [c]ongressional
intent to grant Puerto Rico state-like autonomy," we announced
that, in order for a statute to treat Puerto Rico as a territory
after the island adopted its constitution, "there would have to be
specific evidence or clear policy reasons embedded in a particular
statute to demonstrate a statutory intent to intervene more
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extensively into the local affairs of post-Constitutional Puerto
Rico than into the local affairs of a state." Id. at 42. Seeing
no such evidence or policy reasons, we concluded that "it is fair
to assume that the framers of the Sherman Act, had they been aware
of the FRA and subsequent Constitutional developments, would have
intended that Puerto Rico be treated as a 'state' under the Act,
once Commonwealth status was achieved." Id.
Having sketched the contours of the historical and legal
landscape, we now turn to the question of whether § 2421(a) treats
Puerto Rico as a state or a territory.
Analysis
The government argues that Crespo controls this case and
that Cordova is inapposite. As a fallback, it maintains that,
even under the Cordova test, Puerto Rico should still be deemed a
"Territory or Possession of the United States." Maldonado, by
contrast, argues that the Cordova framework dictates that post-
constitutional Puerto Rico be treated like a state for purposes of
§ 2421(a).
A. The Cordova Framework Governs
The government offers several reasons why we need not
employ Cordova's analytical framework. First, it insists that we
are bound to follow Crespo and its progeny, Jarabo v. United
States, 158 F.2d 509, 511 (1st Cir. 1946), under the law-of-the-
circuit doctrine. To bolster this argument, the government points
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us to our decision in United States v. Carrasquillo-Peñaloza, 826
F.3d 590, 591 (1st Cir. 2016), where the defendant argued that the
application of 18 U.S.C. § 2423(a), another provision of the Mann
Act, "to conduct wholly within Puerto Rico exceeds Congress's
legislative authority." Seizing upon our characterization of that
argument as "an uphill battle in light of precedent," id. at 592,
the government argues that this decision supports its position
that "Crespo and its progeny impose . . . an insurmountable
obstacle for [Maldonado's] arguments on appeal." We think not.
At the outset, Cordova itself demonstrates that Crespo
and its progeny cannot alone carry the day. In Cordova, we were
confronted with a pre-1952 decision of the Supreme Court that was
directly on point, see Shell Co., 302 U.S. at 259, but we
nonetheless proceeded to ask whether the events culminating in the
adoption of the Puerto Rico Constitution — events that occurred
after Shell Co. was decided — "so change[d] the legal status of
Puerto Rico that the Shell decision no longer ha[d] effect."
Cordova, 649 F.2d at 39. Likewise, the pre-1952 decisions of this
court that the government trumpets do not prohibit us from
reexamining the question we decided in Crespo in light of these
subsequent events.
The government's reliance on Carrasquillo-Peñaloza is
equally misplaced. We held in that case that the defendant "waived
her right to bring [her] challenge [to the scope of § 2423(a)]
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when she entered an unconditional guilty plea and executed a
waiver-of-appeal clause." Carrasquillo-Peñaloza, 826 F.3d at 591.
Because of this holding, we expressly declined to reach the merits
of her argument. Id. at 592. Thus, our gratuitous
characterization of the defendant's argument as "an uphill battle
in light of precedent," id., was textbook dictum, see Dedham Water
Co. v. Cumberland Farms Dairy, Inc., 972 F.2d 453, 459 (1st Cir.
1992), and we therefore are not bound by it, see United States v.
Rodriguez, 630 F.3d 39, 41 (1st Cir. 2010).6
The government's second argument relies on Crespo to
distinguish Cordova. According to the government, Cordova "turned
on" the "[c]ritical" "'fact that, as a general matter, the Sherman
Act ceases to apply to purely local matters once territories become
states, leaving state governments free to enact various local
antitrust laws broadly consistent with general federal policy, but
occasionally divergent as to details.'" (Quoting Cordova, 649
F.2d at 41.) The government insists that this critical feature of
the Sherman Act is absent from the Mann Act. We know this, the
government tells us, because this court in Crespo rejected the
defendant's argument that "it could not have been the intent of
Congress to intervene in matters of interest only to the people of
6 In addition, the waived argument in Carrasquillo-Peñaloza
concerned Congress's constitutional authority to regulate intra-
Puerto Rico conduct. 826 F.3d at 591. In this case, we deal with
a very different question of congressional intent.
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Puerto Rico, that is to say, regulating immorality in general which
is within the proper and exclusive domain of the legislature of
Puerto Rico." 151 F.2d at 45. We are not persuaded.
For one thing, the Sherman Act and the Mann Act are
similar — not different — with respect to Congress's hesitancy to
intervene in the local affairs of a state: both statutes reach
activity that occurs wholly within a territory, see 15 U.S.C.
§ 3(a); 18 U.S.C. § 2421(a), while simultaneously reaching state
conduct only when it occurs "among the several States," 15 U.S.C.
§ 1, or "in interstate or foreign commerce," 18 U.S.C. § 2421(a).
Thus, the sentence from Cordova on which the government so heavily
relies merely explains how a territory's achievement of statehood
affects application of the Sherman Act. Indeed, in support of
this passage, Cordova cited Moore v. United States, 85 F. 465 (8th
Cir. 1898), which dealt with that exact scenario. See Cordova,
649 F.2d at 41 n.29. In Moore, the court held that an indictment
alleging a violation of the predecessor to § 3 of the Sherman Act
with respect to an agreement in restraint of trade in the then-
territory of Utah had no continued effect once Utah achieved
statehood because § 3 no longer applied to Utah after that point.
85 F. at 467-68. The same is true in the Mann Act context. For
example, the Act was understood to reach transportation that
occurred solely within Hawaii when it was a territory. See Lee v.
United States, 125 F.2d 95, 96 (9th Cir. 1942). Once Hawaii
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achieved statehood, however, that same conduct could no longer
violate the Mann Act.
For another thing, the government overstates the
significance of our characterization of the Sherman Act to our
holding in Cordova. It was not "[c]ritical" to our decision.
Instead, the critical fact in Cordova was the absence of "specific
evidence or clear policy reasons embedded in [the Sherman Act] to
demonstrate a statutory intent to intervene more extensively into
the local affairs of post-Constitutional Puerto Rico than into the
local affairs of a state." 649 F.2d at 42. Only in the absence
of such evidence could we conclude that "it is fair to assume that
the framers of the Sherman Act, had they been aware of the FRA and
subsequent Constitutional developments, would have intended that
Puerto Rico be treated as a 'state' under the [Sherman] Act, once
Commonwealth status was achieved." Id.
In its third attempt to avoid Cordova, the government
cites Sánchez Valle in support of the position that "Puerto Rico
remains a territory under the U.S. Constitution," such that Crespo
remains controlling. But neither Sánchez Valle nor Puerto Rico's
status under the Constitution forecloses application of the
Cordova framework. In Sánchez Valle, the Supreme Court took pains
to acknowledge the "distinctive, indeed exceptional, status as a
self-governing Commonwealth" that Puerto Rico occupies today, but
the issue presented in that case — whether Puerto Rico and the
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United States are different sovereigns for purposes of the dual-
sovereignty doctrine — compelled the Court to look not to the
present but to the distant past to ascertain "the 'ultimate source'
of Puerto Rico's prosecutorial power." 136 S. Ct. at 1874 (quoting
United States v. Wheeler, 435 U.S. 313, 320 (1978)); see also id.
at 1876. And, although we recently reiterated that Puerto Rico
"is 'constitutionally a territory,'" Franklin Cal. Tax-Free Trust
v. Puerto Rico, 805 F.3d 322, 344 (1st Cir. 2015) (quoting United
States v. Lopez Andino, 831 F.2d 1164, 1172 (1st Cir. 1987)
(Torruella, J., concurring)), that observation is beside the
point. This case requires us to answer a question of congressional
intent, see Cordova, 649 F.2d at 39, not one of the constitutional
relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States. See Jusino
Mercado v. Puerto Rico, 214 F.3d 34, 40-44 (1st Cir. 2000)
(acknowledging Congress's constitutional authority to legislate
for Puerto Rico differently than for the states but nonetheless
applying the Cordova framework to the question of whether Congress
intended a particular statute to treat Puerto Rico as a state or
a territory).
Undeterred, the government offers a fourth and final
variant of the Crespo-is-controlling argument. This version is
multifaceted. Here's how it works: (1) Crespo held that § 2421(a)
applies to transportation that occurs solely within Puerto Rico.
(2) The FRA's savings clause, 48 U.S.C. § 734, (in the government's
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words) "gives rise to a presumption that [a pre-1952] statute
continues to apply to Puerto Rico in exactly the same way it did
before 1952, unless or until Congress demonstrates the intent to
change the statute's application." (3) The wicked one-two punch
of Crespo's holding and § 734's presumption preserving that holding
topples Maldonado's Cordova argument. We are unconvinced.
The critical flaw in this argument is the government's
misunderstanding of § 734. That statute provides, in pertinent
part, that "[t]he statutory laws of the United States not locally
inapplicable, except as hereinbefore or hereinafter otherwise
provided, shall have the same force and effect in Puerto Rico as
in the United States." 18 U.S.C. § 734. The import of this
language is clear: federal laws — with an exception, which need
not concern us, for those that are "locally inapplicable" — apply
in Puerto Rico just as they do in the United States. The text
does not support the government's position that the interpretation
of a particular statute's application to Puerto Rico is frozen in
time — notwithstanding the evolution of Puerto Rico's relationship
with the United States — until Congress says otherwise.
Moreover, the government's interpretation of § 734 is
not merely textually baseless; it is also entirely unsupported by
our case law. Section 734 is most often invoked when a federal
statute is silent on whether it applies to Puerto Rico; in these
circumstances, reliance on § 734 solidifies the conclusion that
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Puerto Rico is within the statute's reach. See, e.g., United
States v. Acosta-Martinez, 252 F.3d 13, 18, 20 (1st Cir. 2001)
(explaining the "default rule . . . that, as a general matter, a
federal statute does apply to Puerto Rico pursuant to 48 U.S.C.
§ 734" and holding that the Federal Death Penalty Act applies to
Puerto Rico); United States v. Villarin Gerena, 553 F.2d 723, 724-
26 (1st Cir. 1977) (rejecting argument that 18 U.S.C. § 242 does
not apply to Puerto Rico); Moreno Rios v. United States, 256 F.2d
68, 71-72 (1st Cir. 1958) (holding that the Narcotic Drugs Import
and Export Act — which applied to "the several States and
Territories, and the District of Columbia" — applied to Puerto
Rico and continued to do so after 1952). In this case, however,
we are not confronted with the question of whether § 2421(a)
applies to Puerto Rico in the first place (it indisputably does),
but rather with the more nuanced question of whether, in light of
the events that culminated in the adoption of the Puerto Rico
Constitution, it continues to apply to Puerto Rico as a territory
or instead treats it as a state. Neither § 734 nor our case law
interpreting that statute aids us in answering that question.
The government doubles down on its interpretation of
§ 734 by relying on a single sentence from our decision in United
States v. Quinones, 758 F.2d 40, 43 (1st Cir. 1985): "The
congressional intent behind the approval of the Puerto Rico
Constitution was that the Constitution would operate to organize
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a local government and its adoption would in no way alter the
applicability of United States laws and federal jurisdiction in
Puerto Rico." But Quinones, like all of the other cases citing
§ 734, does not support the government's reading of that statute.
The defendant in Quinones argued that the wiretap
provision in the Omnibus Crime Control Act did not apply to Puerto
Rico because a provision of the Puerto Rico Constitution prohibited
wiretapping in the commonwealth. Id. at 41. The linchpin of this
argument was the defendant's belief that the Puerto Rico
Constitution had the force of federal law because it was approved
by Congress. Id. We rejected that argument and, in doing so,
explained that, "[w]hile the creation of the Commonwealth granted
Puerto Rico authority over its own local affairs, Congress
maintains similar powers over Puerto Rico as it possesses over the
federal states." Id. at 43. We then explained, using the language
that the government seizes on in this case, that Congress did not
intend the Puerto Rico Constitution to "alter the applicability of
United States law and federal jurisdiction in Puerto Rico." Id.
Properly understood, then, Quinones stands for the
unremarkable proposition that a provision of the Puerto Rico
Constitution cannot prevail where it conflicts with applicable
federal law — a proposition that applies equally to state
constitutions. See Acosta-Martinez, 252 F.3d at 18 (relying on
Quinones to reject the argument that the Federal Death Penalty Act
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should not apply to Puerto Rico because a provision of the Puerto
Rico Constitution banned the death penalty; "a provision of the
Constitution of Puerto Rico does not trump a federal criminal
statute, where Congress intends to apply the statute to Puerto
Rico"; "[T]he Constitution of Puerto Rico governs proceedings in
the Commonwealth courts; this is true of state constitutions and
proceedings in state courts. Those constitutions do not govern
the definitions or the penalties Congress intends for federal
crimes." (citation omitted)). Nothing in Quinones (or any other
decision) supports the government's view that § 734 freezes in
time a pre-1952 interpretation of a statute's application to Puerto
Rico. As was true in Cordova, we remain free to reexamine our
pre-1952 decision in Crespo in light of the evolution of the
relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States.
For these reasons, we conclude that Crespo no longer
settles the question of whether § 2421(a) covers transportation
that occurs entirely within Puerto Rico. Instead, as Maldonado
argues, the Cordova analytical framework must guide our analysis
of whether we should treat Puerto Rico as a state or a territory
for purposes of § 2421(a). We now turn to this inquiry.
B. Applying Cordova
As a general matter, "[w]hether Puerto Rico is to be
treated as a state or a territory for purposes of a particular
statute that does not mention it specifically 'depends upon the
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character and aim of the act.'" Jusino Mercado, 214 F.3d at 40
(quoting Shell Co., 302 U.S. at 258). This inquiry entails
construing the text of the statute "to effectuate the intent of
the lawmakers" and considering, in addition to the words in the
statute, "the context, the purposes of the law, and the
circumstances under which the words were employed." Cordova, 649
F.2d at 38 (quoting Shell Co., 302 U.S. at 258). As we have noted,
"[i]n certain circumstances, Puerto Rico's changing status
complicates this task," Jusino Mercado, 214 F.3d at 40, and our
attempt to discern congressional intent behind the statute under
review comes with a unique twist: an assumption that, when
enacting the statute, Congress was aware of how the relationship
between Puerto Rico and the United States would develop in the
decades to come. See id.; Cordova, 649 F.2d at 39. This is such
a case.
Thus, we ask "whether the [Mann] Act's framers, if aware
of Puerto Rico's current constitutional status, would have
intended it to be treated as a 'state' or 'territory' under the
Act." Cordova, 649 F.2d at 39. There are "two possible avenues"
by which we might reach the conclusion that Congress intended to
treat Puerto Rico differently than the states: "an express
direction in the statutory text or some other compelling reason."
Jusino Mercado, 214 F.3d at 42. The first avenue is closed to us
because the Mann Act does not expressly indicate that Puerto Rico
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is to be treated as a territory or that transportation that occurs
solely within Puerto Rico suffices. Cf. Antilles Cement Corp. v.
Fortuño, 670 F.3d 310, 320-23 & n.3 (1st Cir. 2012) (rejecting
argument, based on Cordova, that the Buy American Act (BAA) did
not apply to Puerto Rico — just as it did not apply to the states
— because, among other reasons, the BAA explicitly encompassed
construction projects occurring in Puerto Rico; court
distinguished Cordova on this basis).7
All that remains for the government, therefore, is the
second avenue — "some other compelling reason" — which requires
"'specific evidence or clear policy reasons embedded in a
particular statute to demonstrate a statutory intent to intervene
more extensively into the local affairs of post-Constitutional
Puerto Rico than into the local affairs of a state.'" Jusino
Mercado, 214 F.3d at 42-43 (quoting Cordova, 649 F.2d at 42). The
government argues that the committee reports that accompanied the
passage of the Mann Act in 1910 satisfy this requirement. We
disagree.
7 The Mann Act's failure to include Puerto Rico explicitly
also distinguishes this case from United States v. Beach, 324 U.S.
193, 195 (1945) (per curiam), in which the Supreme Court held that
the Act covered transportation that occurs solely within the
District of Columbia. When Beach was decided, the Mann Act
prohibited illicit transportation "in the District of Columbia."
Pub. L. No. 61-277, § 2, 36 Stat. at 825; see also Beach, 324 U.S.
at 195.
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The committee reports merely discuss application of the
Mann Act to transportation within territories as a general matter
without mentioning Puerto Rico, and they do not suggest any reason
why Congress might have intended to regulate transportation in
Puerto Rico in particular. Cf. Dávila-Pérez v. Lockheed Martin
Corp., 202 F.3d 464, 467-68 & n.4 (1st Cir. 2000) (concluding that
the Defense Base Act (DBA) — which covered military bases "in any
Territory or possession outside of the continental United States"
— continued to apply to Puerto Rico after 1952 because, among other
reasons, the legislative history of the DBA "specifically
indicat[ed] that Puerto Rico is within the reach of the Act"
(citing H.R. Rep. 77-1070, at 4 (1941))). The most that can be
said about the committee reports in this case is that they indicate
(as the government argues) that Congress intended to exercise its
regulatory authority to the fullest extent permissible under the
Constitution when it passed the Mann Act.
But this alone is not enough for the government to
prevail under the Cordova test. In Shell Co., the Supreme Court
explained that, in passing the Sherman Act, Congress intended "to
exercise all the power it possessed." 302 U.S. at 259 (quoting
Atl. Cleaners & Dyers v. United States, 286 U.S. 427, 435 (1932)).
In Cordova, we recognized Congress's intent to legislate as broadly
as possible, 649 F.2d at 39, but we nonetheless determined that
there was no specific evidence or clear policy reason embedded in
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the Sherman Act from which to conclude that Congress intended the
Act to intervene more extensively into the local affairs of Puerto
Rico than into the local affairs of a state, see id. at 41-42. So
too here. The fact that Congress in 1910 intended to legislate to
the full extent of its powers in passing the Mann Act fails in and
of itself "to demonstrate a statutory intent to intervene more
extensively into the local affairs of post-Constitutional Puerto
Rico than into the local affairs of a state." Id. at 42 (emphasis
added).
The government, though, has a fallback: the post-1952
amendments to the Mann Act. It postulates that, because none of
these amendments "excluded Puerto Rico from the definition of
'Territory or Possession of the United States'" and because we
must presume that Congress was aware of our holding in Crespo when
it subsequently amended the Mann Act, these amendments demonstrate
Congress's intent for Puerto Rico to remain a territory under
§ 2421(a). Once again, however, we are unpersuaded that this
evidence satisfies Cordova's compelling-reasons hurdle.
For starters, the Mann Act does not provide a definition
of "Territory or Possession of the United States." In this
respect, this case is unlike Dávila-Pérez, upon which the
government relies. That case involved the DBA, which applies to
United States military and naval bases "in any Territory or
possession outside the continental United States," 42 U.S.C.
- 23 -
§ 1651(a)(2), and defines "continental United States" as "the
States and the District of Columbia," id. § 1651(b)(4). In
concluding that the DBA applied to United States military bases
located in Puerto Rico in Dávila-Pérez, we deemed it significant
that Congress added the definition of "continental United States"
seven years after the Puerto Rico Constitution went into effect,
while simultaneously making it explicit that the DBA did not apply
to Alaska, which had recently achieved statehood. See Dávila-
Pérez, 202 F.3d at 469 ("Most important, the definition of
'continental United States' was added to the [DBA] only seven years
after the alleged change in Puerto Rico's status without any
reference to that fact. In sharp contrast, in response to Alaska's
transition from a territory to a state, Congress immediately
deleted the reference to Alaska in the [DBA] and added the
definition of 'continental United States' to ensure that Alaska
was excluded from the scope of the Act." (citation omitted)). The
same cannot be said for the Mann Act; none of the post-1952
amendments to § 2421 indicate a congressional intent to treat
Puerto Rico as a territory under that section.
Moreover, with the exception of the elimination of the
District of Columbia — which was, unlike Puerto Rico, specifically
enumerated in the text of § 2421 (and its predecessors) until 19868
8Compare Pub. L. No. 80-772, 62 Stat. at 812 (prior version
of § 2421 reaching illicit transportation "in the District of
- 24 -
— none of the post-1952 amendments to the Mann Act have altered
the territory-or-possession language in § 2421.9 See 18 U.S.C.
§ 2421(a) (reaching illicit transportation "in any Territory or
Possession of the United States"); Justice for Victims of
Trafficking Act of 2015, Pub. L. No. 114-22, § 303, 129 Stat. 227,
255-56 (enacting § 2421(a) with this same language); Pub. L. No.
99-628, § 5(b), 100 Stat. at 3511 (1986 reenactment of § 2421 with
this same language); Pub. L. No. 80-772, 62 Stat. at 812 (1948
codification of § 2421 with this same language); see also
Protection of Children From Sexual Predators Act of 1998, Pub. L.
No. 105-314, § 106, 112 Stat. 2974, 2977 (amending other language
of § 2421 in a manner not relevant here). This post-1952
legislative history does not constitute the sort of specific
evidence or clear policy reasons that Cordova requires; instead,
it stands in stark contrast to the post-constitutional legislative
history with which we have been confronted in other cases.
Columbia"), and Pub. L. No. 61-277, § 2, 36 Stat. at 825 (same in
predecessor to § 2421), with Child Sexual Abuse and Pornography
Act of 1986, Pub. L. No. 99-628, § 5(b), 100 Stat. 3510, 3511
(omitting District of Columbia in § 2421).
9
As we explain below, see infra note 10, another provision
of the Mann Act, § 2423(a), has a more eventful history than its
counterpart in § 2421. The "in any Territory or Possession of the
United States" language in § 2421, by contrast, has remained
unchanged since 1948. See supra note 3 (explaining addition of
the term "Possession" in 1948).
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For example, in Antilles Cement, we concluded that two
aspects of the post-1952 legislative history of the BAA supported
our conclusion that the Act continued to apply to Puerto Rico even
though it did not apply to the states. 670 F.3d at 321. First,
we noted that Congress overhauled and reenacted the BAA in 2011,
leaving the explicit statutory reference to Puerto Rico intact.
Id. We explained that "[w]e [could] think of no better indicator
of Congress's intent to include Puerto Rico within the reach of
the BAA than its overhauling the BAA yet preserving the law's
explicit application to the Commonwealth." Id. Second, we deemed
Congress's decision to retain the explicit reference to Puerto
Rico all the more significant when juxtaposed with Congress's
diligence "in amending the BAA to remove entities that it no longer
intends to cover"; Congress promptly amended the BAA to remove the
explicit references to Alaska and Hawaii once those former
territories achieved statehood. Id. Similarly, in Dávila-Pérez,
we contrasted Congress's immediate deletion of the explicit
reference to Alaska in the DBA once the former territory obtained
statehood with the post-1952 addition of a definition of the
"'continental United States' . . . without any reference" to the
Puerto Rico Constitution or Puerto Rico's commonwealth status.
202 F.3d at 469.
Unlike the post-1952 legislative history that we
examined in Antilles Cement and Dávila-Pérez, the post-1952
- 26 -
amendments to the Mann Act do not indicate that Congress intended
§ 2421(a) to intervene more extensively into the local affairs of
Puerto Rico than into the local affairs of the states. See
Cordova, 649 F.2d at 42. Therefore, these amendments cannot
satisfy the Cordova test.
Finally, the government insists that there are clear
policy reasons for applying § 2421(a) to transportation that occurs
solely within Puerto Rico. Offering two documents — a research
paper on human trafficking in Puerto Rico and the United States
Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report from 2014 — the
government argues that "[t]ransportation of sex-crime victims
within Puerto Rico is a pervasive problem, and the federal
government's prosecutorial authority under Section 2421 is a
significant bulwark."
We do not doubt the seriousness of the human-trafficking
situation in Puerto Rico that is relayed in the government-cited
documents. But Cordova requires that the "clear policy reasons"
be "embedded in [the] particular statute," and the "specific
evidence" that Cordova discusses similarly must "demonstrate a
statutory intent" to treat Puerto Rico as a territory instead of
a state. 649 F.2d at 42 (emphasis added). In short, the specific
evidence or clear policy reasons must be responsive to the key
congressional-intent question that we must address: "whether the
[Mann] Act's framers, if aware of Puerto Rico's current
- 27 -
constitutional status, would have intended it to be treated as a
'state' or 'territory' under the Act." Id. at 39. Because the
government's documents tell us nothing about what Congress
intended, they do not help us answer this critical question.
In sum, against the backdrop of clear congressional
intent to grant Puerto Rico state-like autonomy, see Examining
Bd., 426 U.S. at 594; Cordova, 649 F.2d at 42, we have not found
specific evidence or clear policy reasons embedded in § 2421(a) to
suggest that, had the framers of that section known of the
evolution of the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United
States that took place in the decades since the passage of the
Mann Act, they would have intended § 2421(a) to intervene in Puerto
Rico's local affairs more extensively than it intervenes in the
states' local affairs. We therefore must conclude that, had the
framers foreseen these developments, they would have intended that
§ 2421(a) treat Puerto Rico similarly to the states. Accordingly,
we hold that § 2421(a) does not extend to illicit transportation
that occurs solely within Puerto Rico; instead, it reaches only
transportation "in interstate or foreign commerce" with respect to
the island.10
10 In reaching the same conclusion, the district court also
relied on the 1998 amendment to § 2423(a), another provision of
the Mann Act, and the enactment of 18 U.S.C. § 2426. In 1998,
Congress amended § 2423(a) to increase the maximum penalty for
that offense. See H.R. Rep. No. 105-557, at 22 (1998). Before
the bill was enacted, a floor amendment proposed adding the word
- 28 -
We emphasize that our holding today is a narrow one: it
applies only to the scope of § 2421(a), and not to the other
provisions of the Mann Act. We therefore need not and do not
express an opinion on whether those other provisions cover
transportation that occurs solely within Puerto Rico.11
"commonwealth" to the phrase "in any territory or possession of
the United States" in § 2423(a); the floor amendment passed without
explanation. 144 Cong. Rec. S12,262 (daily ed. Oct. 9, 1998)
(statement of Sen. Coats). The enacted amendment to § 2423(a)
therefore reached illicit transportation "in any commonwealth,
territory or possession of the United States." Pub. L. No. 105-
314, § 103, 112 Stat. at 2976; see also id. § 104(a), 112 Stat. at
2976 (adding 18 U.S.C. § 2426, which provided the following
definition of "State" for the purposes of that section: "a State
of the United States, the District of Columbia, and any
commonwealth, territory, or possession of the United States").
The "commonwealth, territory or possession" language has remained
in § 2423(a) ever since. See 18 U.S.C. § 2423(a); see also id.
§ 2426 (containing same definition of "State" for purposes of that
section as was contained in Pub. L. No. 105-314).
Like the district court, Maldonado stresses to us the
importance of the addition of the commonwealth language in
§§ 2423(a) and 2426. But because Cordova is alone sufficient to
support our conclusion in this case, we need not — and therefore
do not — express any opinion on this issue.
11 Proceeding under the assumption that § 2423(a) covers
illicit transportation that occurs solely within Puerto Rico — a
matter on which we express no opinion — the government argues that
our conclusion that § 2421(a) does not apply to such transportation
creates an absurd result. We are unmoved. Even if the government
is correct that the two provisions diverge in scope with respect
to intra-Puerto Rico transportation (and we emphasize "if"), we
are not convinced that such a result is absurd; the two provisions
employ different language to identify the transportation covered,
they specify separate crimes against separate classes of victims,
and they have not been amended in lockstep with one another. In
short, it is not at all clear to us that Congress intended the two
provisions to have the same scope. In this case, we are called
upon to decide only whether § 2421(a), not § 2423(a), reaches
illicit transportation that occurs solely within Puerto Rico. For
- 29 -
Conclusion
For these reasons, we affirm the district court's
dismissal of the indictment.
reasons already explained, Cordova provides the appropriate
analytical framework for deciding that question and leads us to
the conclusion that we reach. The government has not explained —
and we cannot discern — why the assumed scope of a different
statutory section should alter our Cordova analysis of the scope
of § 2421(a).
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United States v. Maldonado-Burgos
Court: Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
Date filed: 2016-12-21
Citations: 844 F.3d 339
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