Today, Explained - #FreeBritney was right

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

Britney Spears returned to conservatorship court this week. Vox’s Constance Grady explains how Spears has rapidly become the face of a legal reform movement. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Today, February 12th, 2021, Justin Timberlake publicly apologized to Britney Spears. The apology has a lot less to do with their bygone romance and much more to do with a reckoning over how this country treats its famous young women. So a conservatorship is a legal solution for what happens if you're an adult, but you can't make decisions for your life in your best interests. Brittany went under conservatorship in 2008. Do we have any sense of like how she feels about all of this maybe positive attention she's getting now?

It's not something that she talks about in public much. Possibly not something she's necessarily allowed to talk about in public much. She is inaccessible and unknowable. Today, Britney Spears. Constance Grady, you're a senior reporter here at Vox. We spoke to you about Britney Spears back in February, and so much has happened since then with Britney Spears. What is going on, Constance? Yeah, man.

So back in February, we spoke right after the release of Framing Britney Spears, the documentary from the New York Times and Hulu that really started this big cultural conversation about Britney. Britney was so serious and so focused. And how we treated women in the office. People became fascinated with her sort of unraveling. And also whether conservatorships are okay. And anytime there's that amount of money to be made, you have to question the motives of everyone close to that person. And since then, there's just been this constant outpouring of attention. The whole world knows what Britney Spears wants,

and it is the freedom and the liberty that should be offered to every single American. Free Britney! Woo! It's made allies out of people like Representative Matt Gaetz and Senator Elizabeth Warren. It's the thing that's going to bring our divided country together is free Britney, man. And how has this story progressed from there? So there have been two major pieces of journalism about the Britney Spears conservatorship that have come out over the past few weeks. First of all, there was an expose in the New York Times,

which revealed some slightly disturbing things about how this conservatorship has gone down. We've always known that Britney's finances were heavily scrutinized and that anything she bought was subject to review, but the New York Times made it clear that she's not actually allowed to make a lot of purchases that she would like to make. There was a bit where she just wanted to refurnish her kitchen cabinets and was not allowed to do so because her father said she'd spent too much money. Britney's father in charge of the conservatorship that he has not taken seriously the incredible responsibility he's been given by taking control of his daughter's life. Jamie Spears has been to rehab for alcoholism and the Times reported that Britney Spears has had concerns that he has relapsed and that she reported those to the court and asked that he

be asked to take random alcohol tests, and that the judge told her that she had no right to ask for something like that. That is information we did not have before. One of the big caveats that we always used to have when we talked about this conservatorship was, you know, maybe Brittany likes it. Maybe it's helpful for her. Maybe she feels safer that way. But the Times report made it very clear that she has been trying to get out of this situation for a really, really long time. And the next big moment in this story, as it progresses since we last spoke about it, is when Britney herself finally speaks. So on June 23rd, Britney Spears spoke before the court in an open testimony. I will be honest with you, I haven't been back to court in a long time because I don't think I was heard on any level when I came to court the last time. It was the first time that we have heard Britney speak about the conservatorship on

the record since 2008. Ma'am, my dad and anyone involved in this conservatorship and my management who played a huge role in punishing me when I said, no, ma'am, they should be in jail. Her access to the public has been very, very tightly curtailed. She has not been able to make her feelings about the conservatorship known until now. And what she said was that she wants it to end. And she has not been happy for a really long time. She said, I'm not happy. I can't sleep. I'm so angry. It's insane. She says that she thinks that her family should be in jail for what they have done to her. And maybe most disturbingly, she said that she has not been able to control her body while she has been under this conservatorship. I have a ID inside of myself right now, so I don't get pregnant.

I wanted to take the ID out so I could start trying to have another baby, but this so-called team won't let me go to the doctor to take it out because they don't want me to have children, any more children. And also that she was put on lithium against her will and involuntarily committed as what she interpreted as a punishment for not doing a specific dance move in rehearsals that her management really wanted her to do. She's sort of painting a picture that almost feels like a gothic novel, right? She's this figure who has lost all control over herself and her body, just controlled by her father,

when she's a multimillionaire platinum recording artist. I wish I could stay with you on the phone forever because when I get off the phone with you, all of a sudden, all of I hear, I hear all these no's, no, no, no. And then all of a sudden I get, I feel ganged up on and I feel bullied and I feel left out and alone and I'm tired of feeling alone. And this is such a big moment because the narrative for these, you know, 13 years of her conservatorship is that we never hear from Britney herself. We don't know how Britney

actually feels. Britney's comments on this conservatorship have been sort of hard to parse out at times. And here, it's just this unfiltered, raw monologue about her experience. Yeah, yeah. It's really, I think, a big game changer. I've been reporting on this case for a little while, and any time I talked about it, I had to say, you know, we don't really know what's going on here. The only person who does know is Britney and she's not talking. But now she very much is and she's making herself so clear. And that means that the way that we have to talk about this case just has to change. What happens after she speaks in court? So shortly after Britney speaks in court,

we get the second of these two big journalistic exposes. This one is from The New Yorker. It's reported out by Ronan Farrow and Gia Tolentino. And what this one does is really reveal some of the lengths that her father has gone to as her conservator in slightly disturbing ways. According to this report, Jamie Spears began a habit of referring to himself as Britney Spears. When people questioned his decision-making in the conservatorship, he would go, I am Britney Spears. It also says that in the early days of the conservatorship, he would repeatedly call Britney a whore and tell her she was a terrible mother and tell her that she needed to lose weight to get back into shape to make her comeback. One thing we can all agree on

is that Jamie Spears is a dick. And this article mostly supports that theory. It also reveals that all of the big, major, Britney iconic breakdown moments that people remember, like shaving her head or beating the paparazzi's car with an umbrella, were preceded by her trying to go to her ex-husband Kevin Federline's house just to see her kids and being denied access. And the first time she was involuntarily committed, we learn, was because she didn't want to give her kids back after a custody visit. And she just took one of them into a bathroom and started crying and saying she wasn't going to come out. Apparently, Federline's lawyer called the police and they came with like a SWAT team and strapped her down to a gurney. She lost her aunt. She went through a divorce. She had two fucking kids. Her husband turned out to be a user, a cheater, and now she's going through a custody battle. All you people care about is readers and making money off of her. She's a human.

And she was back in court this week on Wednesday. What happened on Wednesday? So on Wednesday, we got some big movement in the Britney Spears case. So Britney Spears, for the entirety of the conservatorship, has not been able to choose her own representation. She has a court-appointed lawyer who she has been obliged to pay a salary to under the terms of her conservatorship, which means conflict of interest-wise, there's just very little incentive for him to try to end this. He gets a salary either way. But she said during her testimony that she wanted to choose her own lawyer. And on Wednesday's hearing, the judge has decided that she is allowed to do so. The judge did allow Britney Spears

to be represented by an attorney of her choice, and it is prominent celebrity attorney Matthew Rosengart. The question remains, why is he involved? He should step down voluntarily, as that is in the best interest of Britney Spears. He's worked with a lot of major figures in entertainment, including Sean Penn and Steven Spielberg. And this is a major step forward for Britney. It means that she's now working with someone who has an incentive to end this conservatorship and really make some changes for her. Also, Spears was not scheduled to speak in court today, but she did on the phone. She said, I am here to get rid of my dad.

She then gave a 10-minute testimony where she cried, and she said she wants her father removed from her conservatorship and charges him with conservator abuse. You made a joke, I think, at the top of the show about this being the issue that will finally unite this country. But you're not totally joking. Why is it that, you know, Representative Matt Gaetz and Senator Elizabeth Warren can unite on this particular issue? What is it about Britney Spears' conservatorship that the whole world finds compelling? I think on the one hand, you know, there's a pretty simple explanation for that, which is this is a kind of classic small government case, right, that small c conservatives can get behind. And it's also a disability rights case that liberals can get behind. But I think there's another reason that

everyone is so invested in Britney Spears and whether the question of whether she is in control of herself. And that's because that has always been the question about Britney Spears. When she first became famous, the sort of the way that people would dismiss her would be to say, oh, you know, she's a product of her producers. She doesn't really know what she's doing. And the way that people sort of exalted her, the thing that a lot of people liked about her was this idea that maybe she didn't know what she was doing. That's kind of at the center of the whole sexy baby voice she does and the sexy schoolgirl thing. It's this fantasy that she's incredibly hot, but she doesn't know it. And thus, her sexuality is unthreatening. And the question of whether she's doing that on purpose and whether she knows what

she's doing has kind of been in the middle of every big Britney Spears profile or think piece or interview for the past basically 30 years now. Who is Britney Spears and is she in control of herself? That's the big question we've had for her. And along the way, she has become the face of conservatorship. Yeah, yeah. Most of the conservatorship reform advocates I've spoken to have said that they think of the Britney Spears case as a kind of ambassador case to get the rest of the country more aware of this very bizarre legal situation and to have the rest of us think about whether conservatorships are effective and whether they need to be reformed. I love what you do. Don't you know that you're toxic? And Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an Aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it.

You can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an Aura frame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday and she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the oroframe. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com

to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-FRAMES.COM, promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. My name is Nina Cohn, and I'm a law professor at Syracuse University and a distinguished scholar in elder law at Yale Law School.

Okay, which means you know a lot about conservatorships? I do. So, Nina, a question I have to ask you then is, what's your favorite Britney Spears song? Oh, gosh. Maybe I'm Not That Innocent. Don't you think I'm in love And I'm sent from above

I'm not that innocent. Great. How has your life changed now that Britney Spears has become the face of conservatorships in America? Well, you know, myself and other advocates for older adults and people with disabilities have been concerned about this issue for decades. But Britney Spears' case has really brought a level of attention to it we've never seen before. And I'm really hoping that that could be the spark for some meaningful reform. And help us understand, because Britney Spears is obviously the most high-profile subject of a conservatorship, maybe in the world, but she's far from the only

one, right? So how many people in the United States are in this kind of legal relationship? So unfortunately, the U.S. has a truly woeful lack of data about who is subject to guardianship or conservatorship and why. But estimates suggest that somewhere in the neighborhood of one and a half million adults are under guardianship or conservatorship. Okay, and this isn't a federal system, right? Which is probably part of the reason we don't have, you know, really accurate data. Every state has their own type of conservatorship law

and their own system? Correct. This is state law and state-level data. So every state has a statute, and some of them are quite outdated, governing when a court may appoint somebody to make decisions for somebody who the court has found can't make decisions for themselves. And we have reason to believe from reporting from The New Yorker and The New York Times and testimony from Britney Spears herself that her situation is untenable,

it's maybe even abusive, that she doesn't have freedom over decisions on her own body, things like this. A lot of people are seeing this conservatorship system, especially in California, and thinking there's something terribly wrong here. But give us an idea how this looks when it's working well. So keep in mind that guardianship and conservatorship should always be a last resort

because it can strip an individual of the right to make even the most basic intimate decisions for themselves. But there's times when it is the best option. Because you have an individual who's experiencing harm or is at substantial risk of some very real harm because they can't make decisions for themselves and there's no less restrictive way to meet their needs. So maybe it'd be helpful for me to give an example or two? I'd love one, sure. So let's imagine we have an individual who has severe Alzheimer's disease, but that individual never appointed anyone to make decisions for them.

And now maybe they face eviction because they can't pay the rent and nobody has authority to do so, or they need to move because they're unsafe in their home, but nobody has the authority to consent to that, or they need health care decisions made. It may be the best option to appoint another person to make decisions for them. And a guardian or conservator has the advantage of being a fiduciary, so they owe a high level of loyalty, a high level of care, and they're also overseen by a court. And, you know, the need can arise, too, I should mention, when somebody does do good planning or what seems like good planning at the outset.

So maybe they've appointed somebody to make health care decisions for them using a health care power of attorney. They have a power of attorney for finances in place, but something goes wrong. Maybe their agent died, or maybe their agent has become their abuser and is exploiting them. So the need can also arise when somebody does all the planning that I typically recommend that they do as an elder law attorney. Now that we've talked about an example of how this can go well, I want to return to how this can go poorly. And Britney Spears isn't the only cultural touchstone here. There's also like a Netflix movie about how badly this can go, especially with regard to elderly folks.

Absolutely. A lot can go wrong. And Netflix's movie, I Care A Lot, is this fictional horror story that somehow combines thriller and guardianship, which is not something you hear a lot. You know, I'm not sure what this is. It's a court order, ma'am. A court order? But what's that got to do with me? That's your name, correct? Jennifer Peterson, your date of birth, your social security number,

and this address. Oh my goodness, have I done something wrong? Oh no, ma'am, this is to help you. My name is Marla Grayson. I'm just someone who cares. It's very much a work of fiction, but if you look at the tricks The Guardian plays in that movie, a number of them are really enabled by state law in many states. So one trick is that she petitions for guardianship

without telling her elderly Mark. Let me tell you something. I never went to court. This is the first thing I've heard about court. In emergencies, the court can convene without the presence of the prospective ward. Wow, that's crazy. State guardianship laws permit courts

to appoint emergency guardians without notice either to the individual alleged to need a guardian or to family or friends who might come to their defense. In the movie, you see Marla, and I don't mean to give away too much here, but you see Marla place her victim in a nursing home and then immediately turn around and sell her house. Marla Grayson, I believe she made it happen. She's your mother's guardian. She now has full control of your mother's life and assets. Well, in most states, such moves are considered routine and they don't require specific court approval. And of course, the biggest thing the evil protagonist has in going for her really in I Care A Lot is that the court ignores clear evidence of her wrongdoing.

She has a loving son to take care of her, and I just don't understand how the court can entrust my mother to this stranger. Ms. Grayson forced my mother into the home when she made it very clear that she didn't want to go. It's a goddamn nightmare. She has forced my mother into the home when she made it very clear that she didn't want to go. It's a goddamn nightmare. She has kidnapped my mother. Please, sir, calm down. Marla Grayson is a well-respected professional guardian. And failure of courts to adequately monitor guardians is a longstanding and chronic problem. And it leaves those who these systems are designed to protect at very real risk. And while it maybe appears now that all of the attention on freeing Britney will

result in her perhaps regaining control of her life, do you think all of this added attention on conservatorships and guardianships might actually tangibly change these laws? I'm cautiously optimistic. One reason the Spears case has the potential to really spark some reform here is who Ms. Spears is. She's a young, vibrant, talented woman who's clearly able to express her wishes. And that's not our typical image of somebody subject to guardianship or conservatorship. We're typically thinking that these are people who are very old, who have substantial cognitive disabilities, people who unfortunately our society has often treated as expendable. So seeing this type of thing happen to Miss Spears,

somebody who should be in the prime of her life, I think really suggests to people how deeply problematic this system can be and the need to make sure that guardianship is truly used as a last resort and that people aren't stripped of legal rights unnecessarily. Bye. When I'm out from under. From under. From under. From under. From under. And part of me still believes when you're.