STOP THE GATEKEEPING: INTRODUCING THE EMERGENCY LODGING SAFETY & PRIVACY ACT (ELSPA)

STOP THE GATEKEEPING: INTRODUCING THE EMERGENCY LODGING SAFETY & PRIVACY ACT (ELSPA)
San Rafael, CA– February 19, 2026 – For decades, the hospitality industry has acted as the final checkpoint in a system designed to keep women in transit, untraceable, and unprotected. Today, we are introducing the Emergency Lodging Safety & Privacy Act (ELSPA) to smash the "Logistical Cage" that hotels use to facilitate enslavement.
​The era of hotels acting as de facto border guards for human traffickers is over.
​Current hotel "policies"—the mandatory government ID and the secondary credit card—are not about "hospitality." They are tools of surveillance. When a woman arrives at a desk and is turned away because she doesn't have a matching ID or a second card, the hotel isn't "following policy"; they are knowingly handing her back to her captor or the street.
​It is none of the hotel’s damn business who pays for a room.
​ELSPA strips the industry of its power to gatekeep safety:
​Payment is the Only Requirement: If a room is paid for by a friend, a family member, or an advocate, the transaction is finished. Any demand for a guest’s personal credit card—which serves only to create a digital breadcrumb trail for an abuser—is now illegal. * End the ID Checkpoint: Abusers steal IDs to erase a woman's legal existence. Hotels use that theft to deny her a bed. ELSPA mandates that a third-party payment and verification are sufficient. A hotel desk is not an FBI precinct; they have no right to demand papers from a person seeking a place to sleep.
​Privacy by Force: The "Safety System" thrives on data. ELSPA mandates that the relationship between the payer and the guest is private. If the hotel is being paid, their interest ends there.
​Liability Where It Belongs: Under ELSPA, if a hotel clerk turns a guest away because they lack "proper" cards or ID, that hotel becomes strictly liable for what happens next. If she is kidnapped, assaulted, or killed, the hotel is financially and legally responsible for that outcome.
​"Hotels have been the silent partners of traffickers for too long, using 'corporate policy' as a shield for what is essentially human rights obstruction," says Jodi Schiller. "If the money is on the table, the door must open. We are taking away their 'discretion' to be part of the murder-for-hire system."

​We aren't asking hotels to be heroes. Though that would be nice, for a change.

We are telling them to take their money, they are businesses, not law enforcement, stop working hand in hand with human traffickers, or face the consequences.
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