Nearly 90 percent of Maryland's hotels, motels and inns failed to submit certifications showing that their employees completed state-mandated human trafficking training last year, according to Maryland Department of Labor records reviewed by reporters. Of the state's 765 eligible lodging properties, only 82 submitted the required annual paperwork in 2025 — the lowest total on record since the law took effect.
The law, enacted through an amendment to Maryland Business Regulation Code § 15-210 that took effect October 1, 2022, requires lodging establishments to train every employee to recognize signs of human trafficking within 90 days of hire and to certify that training annually to state regulators. As reported by WBFF, citing reporting from the Baltimore Sun by Ruben Castaneda, the number of compliant hotels has fallen sharply since the mandate began, even as the properties covered by the law — hotels, motels and inns statewide — have remained largely unchanged.
State labor department figures cited in the reporting show a steep decline: 92 hotels submitted certifications in 2023, that number jumped to 214 in 2024, then collapsed to just 82 in 2025 — less than half the prior year's total. The reporting attributes the drop-off in large part to the fact that Maryland's law carries no civil fine or other specific penalty for hotels that fail to train workers or file the paperwork, leaving property owners with little incentive to comply.
A Law Without Teeth
State Delegate Eric Ebersole sponsored the code amendment requiring hotels to verify staff completed trafficking-prevention training, but the statute as written establishes no enforcement mechanism to back it up. That gap stands in contrast to other states that have paired similar mandates with real financial consequences. Florida Statute § 509.096 allows the state to levy administrative fines of up to $2,000 per day against lodging properties that don't comply, according to Online Sunshine, the state's official statutes portal.
California has gone further still. Its lodging establishments face mandatory staff training rules, and civil penalties of $500 for a first violation and $1,000 for subsequent violations may apply, per California Workplace Law Blog. Derek Marsh, a former Westminster, California police department deputy chief who now serves as associate director of the Global Center for Women and Justice at Vanguard University in Southern California, has been cited on the broader enforcement gap facing states like Maryland that lack similar penalty structures.
Free Training Already Exists
Cost does not appear to explain the low compliance numbers. Since 2019, the Maryland Hotel Lodging Association has partnered with the nonprofit Businesses Ending Slavery and Trafficking to offer “Inhospitable to Human Trafficking,” a 30-minute, state-approved online training course provided free of charge to hotel employees, according to Green Lodging News. That the course is both brief and free suggests the barrier to compliance lies elsewhere — likely in the absence of any penalty for skipping it.
The law enacted alongside the training mandate also requires innkeepers to keep computerized guest transaction records for at least six months, a provision intended to assist law enforcement investigations, per the Maryland General Assembly's 2022 legislation. At the local level, Baltimore City goes a step further than the state, requiring hoteliers to self-certify that employees have completed approved trafficking training as a condition of obtaining or renewing their hotel license, according to the City of Baltimore.
Why Hotels Remain a Trafficking Hotspot
The stakes behind the training requirement are not abstract. Analysis compiled by the Polaris Project documented more than 3,300 reported human trafficking cases occurring inside hotel and motel properties nationwide over a ten-year period, underscoring how frequently traffickers use lodging venues, according to WRC-TV. In 2021, the National Human Trafficking Hotline logged 751 substantive signals regarding trafficking in Maryland, ranking the state 13th highest in overall signal volume nationwide, per figures from the National Human Trafficking Hotline. According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline's Maryland statistics page, the hotline has identified 2,185 human-trafficking cases and 3,848 victims in the state, with 9 entries listed as hotel/motel-based.
Hoodline has reported on a Maryland trafficking case in which a Maryland victim was transported to a hotel along the I-81 corridor, and separately covered a Baltimore hotel used in a cocaine trafficking network — both illustrating how hospitality properties can become staging grounds for illicit activity when oversight is thin.
Maryland lawmakers have continued expanding anti-trafficking training requirements into other industries. In April 2026, Governor Wes Moore signed House Bill 829, requiring for-hire and transportation network drivers to complete approved trafficking awareness training, according to BillTrack50. The American Hotel & Lodging Association Foundation, meanwhile, has promoted its national “No Room for Trafficking” campaign, per the AHLA Foundation.
Whether Maryland lawmakers will introduce fines or other penalties in an upcoming legislative session remains an open question, as does how the state might improve tracking of hotel compliance going forward. For now, the certification numbers on file with the Maryland Department of Labor show a law that exists on paper with little to compel hotels to follow it.
