ACLU Files Amicus Brief to Support Britney Spears
“The ACLU filed the brief, along with 25 civil disability organizations, in support of Spears’ wish to choose her own attorney, which is prohibited by the conservatorship.” Spears has been looking to replace her court-appointed attorney, Sam Ingham III, who resigned from the case last week.
The brief also callas for her to be given access to assistance and tools to make her selection for the replacement.
According to Yahoo:
“Britney Spears has said that she wants to pick her own lawyer and the court should respect that wish,” Zoë Brennan-Krohn, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Disability Rights Project, said in a Tuesday statement. “The court should ensure Spears has access to the tools she needs to make that choice meaningfully and to hire someone she trusts to advocate for her stated goal: to get out of her conservatorship. Spears’s right to select an attorney is not only a basic tenet of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, but also consistent with principles of personal autonomy and agency. The California Superior Court must recognize Spears’s autonomy and the rights of people with disabilities to live independent, self-directed lives as active members of their communities.”
According to Amanda Goad, the Audrey Irmas director of LGBTQ & Reproductive Justice Project at the ACLU SoCal, “Britney’s superstardom and wealth make this an atypical case, but she has described serious infringements on her civil liberties and dignity that are all too typical for people living under conservatorships and guardianships.”
See Lindsey Ellefson, ACLU Files Amicus Brief to Support Britney Spears, Yahoo Entertainment, July 13, 2021.
Special thanks to David S. Luber (Florida Probate Attorney) for bringing this article to my attention.