Republican Nancy Mace and Democrat Charlie Crist have announced new legislation to #FreeBritney. The Free Britney Act, named after Britney Spears’s yearslong crusade to replace her father Jamie as her conservator, would allow conservatees — that is, adults deemed sufficiently incapacitated that the courts grant legal control over their person to a third party in an arrangement called a conservatorship — to replace their conservators with federally funded, court-appointed public employees.
“This legislation allows all Americans to retain their right to petition a judge to replace a private guardian or conservator with a public guardian — an individual with no legal entanglements, no perverse incentives, and no conflicts of interest,” Mace told the Washington Examiner. “The right to petition a judge is really at the heart of this piece of legislation.”
Although conservatorships are usually associated with elderly adults suffering from ailments such as dementia or aphasia, Spears was put under her conservatorship after her tabloid-publicized 2008 breakdown. Given the outstanding circumstances of said breakdown (Spears was likely suffering from some combination of postpartum depression and substance abuse at the time), whether or not Spears still needs to be under a conservatorship is an open question that the Free Britney Act does not address. But it would crucially allow the pop star to petition the court to replace Jamie without requiring her “to prove wrongdoing or malfeasance by the legal guardian or conservator.”
“She’s been working her entire life, and that takes some ability to take care of yourself,” Mace said, noting the extreme cognitive dissonance behind a legal ruling that deprived Britney of her constitutional right to vote while allowing her father to force her to work and enrich himself directly from the profits. On top of the potential for a court-appointed conservator, the FBA would also fund caseworkers to provide further oversight of specific conservatorships and annual data to provide congressional oversight of the state’s overall performance.
“When you look at her case, it is extreme, it is dire, and it should be illegal what they’re doing to her,” the South Carolina congresswoman said. “And as a mom — I’m a young single mom of two kids — [I’m concerned that] they’re taking away her reproductive rights by forcing her to have an IUD. These are things that happen in third-world countries, not here in the United States of America.”
Mace admits that her bill won’t blow up the conservatorship system as some in the #FreeBritney camp would like. Given how crucial the system is for hundreds of thousands of adults, nor should it. But to Mace, the gross abuse of Spears, arguably a violation of her basic constitutional right to due process, renders it necessary for Congress to rectify.
“I want to thank her for coming forward and having the courage to speak out, but if this can happen to Britney Spears, it can happen to anyone,” Mace said. “This isn’t a right versus left issue, this is a right versus wrong issue.”
