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Britney Spears has been offered support by the the American Civil Liberties Union after a court ruled her father Jamie Spears remains the sole conservator of her estate.
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Read More: Why is #FreeBritney trending and what is conservatorship? Here’s everything you need to know
It comes despite the singer’s request for him to step down from the role.
Britney’s father was placed in control of her welfare and finances in 2008 after her well-documented public breakdown. He later relinquished a degree of control in 2019 after he battled ill health, leaving her longtime carer Jodi Montgomery as temporary conservator.
The ACLU has since publicly reached out to Britney after the non-profit organisation tweeted: “People with disabilities have a right to lead self-directed lives and retain their civil rights. If Britney Spears wants to regain her civil liberties and get out of her conservatorship, we are here to help her.”
The organisation later shared an article published on aclu.org, titled “How Conservatorship Threatens Britney Spears’ Civil Rights,” defending her rights
Conservatorship “is the court weighing into the person’s life and saying you, as a person with a disability, are no longer able to make decisions about yourself and livelihood – such as where you live, and how you support and feed yourself – and we are putting someone else in charge of making those decisions. Because it’s such an extreme step to take, it’s really supposed to be a last resort,” Zoe Brennan-Krohn, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Disability Rights Project, explained in the article.
“We don’t know if Britney Spears identifies herself as a person with disabilities, or what, if any, diagnoses she has received,” Brennan-Krohn added. “But by virtue of being under a conservatorship, we know that the court has determined that she is disabled, and has stripped away her civil rights because of that disability. So it’s inherently a civil rights/civil liberties issue.”
The ACLU attorney continued, “What we don’t know is what the info the court had, what Britney has said about what she wants specifically, what other options have been tried, or what her lawyers have said. So while it’s possible that this is an example of a thoughtful conservatorship that was implemented as the last resort and is being reviewed carefully, thoroughly, and regularly, that is not the norm for conservatorships, and it appears inconsistent with what we see of Britney publicly.”
It’s believed that Britney’s attorney Samuel Ingham now has until September 18 to file a petition after the temporary letters of conservatorship were extended until February 1, 2021.
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