["Overprotected" by Britney Spears playing]
♪ I tell them what I like ♪
♪ What I want and what I don't ♪
- This song was released in 2001.
♪ But every time I do, I stand corrected ♪
Looking back, it foreshadows a story
that starts seven years later.
♪ Realize I'm overprotected ♪
One that we've all come to know.
[Crowds chanting]
But it's not just Britney we need to free.
- It sounds just like my story.
And I relate to her so much.
- What we see happening with Britney Spears
is something that we see happening
with people all over the country who aren't famous
and don't get the media attention that Britney does
but still experience really awful stripping of their rights.
- If it can happen to her, it can happen to anyone.
- This past June, Britney Spears made an impassioned plea
to Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny.
It was also the first time many of us heard directly
from the pop icon, rather than from a tabloid,
about the conservatorship she's lived under for 13 years.
During her speech, she explained that she
was extremely unhappy with the legal arrangement.
She also made shocking claims
that she was drugged against her will,
forced to perform, and denied her reproductive rights.
Across the country, an estimated 1.3 million Americans
are under a conservatorship, also known as a guardianship.
- Britney's case is not that unusual.
- Zoe Brennan-Krohn is an attorney
with the ACLU's Disability Rights Program.
- [Zoe] Her fame, her wealth, her talent, those are unusual,
but the process she's going through,
that's happening all the time
in a million other cases in the country,
is I think really important for people to understand.
- A conservatorship or guardianship is ordered
when a judge decides that a person,
usually someone who's elderly or disabled,
is incapable of taking care of themselves.
- And you also see a lot of people who get into them
in some sort of psychiatric crisis.
- So they appoint another individual or organization
to make decisions on the person's behalf.
LaDoris Hazzard Cordell is an author and retired judge
for the Santa Clara County Superior Court in California.
Judge Cordell, in your personal experience,
have you presided over many conservatorship cases?
And what were they like?
- Indeed, I have.
And I will tell you the typical conservatorship
deals with people who are gravely disabled.
Usually, it's the elderly.
If you look at Britney's case,
somebody who clearly can go out and perform
and make a whole lot of money.
- [Yoonj] Right. - And still,
a determination is made, "No, you're still not capable
of really deciding anything about your life."
I find that to be outrageous.
- It can often really be matter of course,
that if a person has disabilities,
their parents get a guardianship over them.
It's a really big, invasive process.
But often it's done as though it's not that big a deal.
- That lack of attention leads to a lack of transparency.
Why is there so much privacy around these cases?
Like with Britney's case, all the records are sealed.
- That's a really good point.
Conservatorships take place in courts paid for by taxpayers
and they are public proceedings.
And what do we know about systems where they're secret?
They're not held accountable to decide
What did the judges do in Britney's case?
They closed the proceedings.
And when did they stop?
When the media and public pressure,
the Free Britney movement took hold. Pressure was on
and then the judge says, "Oh, let's keep it open."
- The records about conservatorship demographics
are spotty, to say the least.
- We count things in our society that are important to us.
And it's quite striking that we do not count
how many people are in conservatorships and guardianships.
And we don't know how many of those are older people,
how many are younger people.
But I know a lot of young people who get into this.
And when they get into it,
they're often there for their whole lives.
- [Yoonj] What we do know is there
is a school-to-guardianship pipeline
that traps disabled young people
in these arrangements at an early age.
- People are told, "This is what you should do.
This is how you help your child.
This is how you take care of them."
And parents don't necessarily know to question that
because it's someone they trust.
It’s a school telling them that.
And it's really, really problematic.
- [Yoonj] Michael Lincoln-McCreight is a 26-year-old
with an intellectual disability
who successfully terminated an oppressive guardianship.
Michael, let's start from the beginning.
How did you end up in a guardianship?
- I didn't realize it was happening
until doctors came to the house
and started asking me a whole bunch of questions.
Then an attorney came in and said,
"You know, you have a court date on this day.
I need you to be there."
So I arrived at the courthouse and that's when I found out
I was petitioned to have my rights taken.
- And how did you feel in the moment that it happened?
- I was ticked off. I was P.O.'ed. Everything in the book.
- I bet.
- I wanted to say something to the judge.
- What would you have said?
- "You get to go home at the end of all of this
and pretend nothing ever happened,
but the person that you had your rights taken,
it's a whole different life."
- What kind of guardianship were you in
and what did that entail?
- I was in a full guardianship.
It takes away your right to vote, your right to get married,
the right to have friendships, all of those things.
- And did you know your guardian?
- No, I did not, 'cause it was a court-appointed guardian.
She put me in a licensed group home,
where I was now not able to go nowhere
and I was fully locked down.
They had me cleaning feces off of mattresses.
They had me restraining individuals.
They had me doing all kinds of stuff.
- Was there a point when you called the police
or asked someone for help?
- Oh, I called a lot of people, the governor, the sheriff,
the chief of police, county commissioners.
Adult Protective Services came out, did absolutely nothing.
- Wild that you called all of these officials
and no one could do anything.
- Well, I knew there had to be some way to get out.
So my friend told me,
"Call Disability Rights [Florida], here's the number."
But I didn't have a phone or anything.
So I had to come up with a smart way
to actually contact them.
So I had to ask the guardian for money,
enough to buy a book or whatever, like 60 bucks.
- Wow.
- And then I snuck out and bought a cell phone.
And then I was able to hide in the closet
and call Disability Rights [Florida].
And we were able to restore my rights.
- Literally, you literally hid in the closet.
- Yes.
[Laughs]
- Michael was actually the first person in Florida
to terminate his guardianship,
using a less-restrictive alternative
called supported decision-making.
- Supported decision-making is what people
with and without disabilities,
use all the time to get support.
Choose people you want to help you make your own choices.
So you're still the one making the choice,
but someone else might help you do it.
- And is that what you're in right now?
- Yes.
- Do you like it?
- I like it.
I'm actually a state-licensed security officer right now.
I work. I'm back to my normal self.
I like to go to the movies. I like to go to karaoke.
I go to karaoke one night every single week.
- Beyond his career and social life,
Michael advocates for the passage
of a supported decision-making law in Florida.
Meanwhile, Britney's case has inspired federal legislation.
Congresspeople Charlie Crist and Nancy Mace
are two representatives behind the Free Act,
which protects Americans
from conservatorship abuse and exploitation.
Tell me about the Free Act. What does it entail exactly?
- The Free Act, first of all, would allow someone
who's in a conservatorship to petition the court or a judge
to have an impartial public guardian,
someone who doesn't have any sort of conflict of interest
in overseeing their conservatorship.
And then it provides a funding mechanism
for courts and counselors to oversee conservatorships
where there may be abuses.
- It also offers transparency, so that the state
has the opportunity to look at what's happening
with any conservatorship or guardianship.
And also offers caseworkers as a fourth point,
people that can monitor what's going on
and make sure that the right thing
is being done according to the new law.
- This isn't the first time
conservatorship-reform legislation
has been introduced in Congress,
but Representatives Mace and Crist are optimistic.
What makes this time different?
- The fact that it's Britney Spears
obviously brings incredible attention to it.
That's one of the things that celebrities have
an opportunity to get change made,
is that they have a certain platform.
- I would agree. Britney's testimony,
she really offered a voice to the voiceless
and gave that voice and emotion
and that courage that she had to speak up in June.
We wouldn't be where we are today if that hadn't happened,
if we didn't hear the horrors of her conservatorship,
this legislation probably wouldn't even be drafted yet.
- What can young people do to advocate
for this legislation and other reform in the near future?
- Well, they can call their congressmen, call their offices
and let them know they support this legislation.
If their member of Congress is not a co-sponsor,
they can encourage them to do that.
- Contact your member of Congress, contact your U.S. senator,
'cause it's gonna have to go over there eventually.
And advocate. Use social media to communicate the fact
that this is important to you as a citizen,
and that you want to see a wrong be righted.
And have that applied to so many people
across our country for their benefit as well.
- In "Overprotected," Britney sings
that "there must be another way."
Today, we learned there is.
And it's time for us to speak up, not just for Britney,
but for everyone who risks losing their civil rights.