The #FreeBritney movement abandoned disabled people

The movement and broader conversation promised to be about more than just Britney, but there has been no outcry while conservatorships and other involuntary programs are being radically expanded.

Quietly, California has set an alarming precedent for how the country is likely to deal with the massive increase in our homeless and unhoused populations. Rather than addressing the economic causes of homelessness—the massive rise in housing costs not commensurate to changes in income levels —the choice is to criminalize disability.

California has passed a law that expands the requirements for the state to commit people to involuntary psychiatric holds and conservatorships, in response to rising homelessness. People deemed unfit to control their own lives will have their legal, medical, financial, and other decisions controlled by the state, often a state-appointed conservator. The law is supposed to pertain to people with addiction or mental illness, but those categories are not further defined. There is no requirement that people pose a risk to themselves or others. Once the state decides who is mentally ill, we are in trouble. Historically, psychiatric confinement was used to lock up people for social difference, including homosexuality, medical disability, or being a woman that doesn’t comply with her husband. The social difference being made illegal today is extreme poverty, an extension of vagrancy and “ugly” laws.

Conservatorships became a national topic when pop star Britney Spears finally spoke out in court about her thirteen years imprisoned by a system that seemed, to most, senseless. She couldn’t spend her own money, make her own medical or legal decisions, have children, or decide her own career or social life. She had been placed under a conservatorship when she had an alleged one-time mental health breakdown, putting her under the control of a team including her father, the courts, and an appointed conservator. When she resisted their demands, she was put into a strict psychiatric program and medicated against her will.

In the discussion around Britney, it came to light that more than a million people in this country are under conservatorships, which is about one in every three hundred people. The system was originally designed for truly incapacitated people, who need help managing their health and finances. (Disability justice advocates point out that there is already power of attorney for that.) But Britney was able to produce music and perform complicated song and dance routines nightly. She spoke in court about how this system was being used to exploit her, extract labor, and enrich others. It was slavery, essentially.

The movement known as #freeBritney was mostly led by young fans, but they were powerful. The media and ultimately the courts responded, setting Britney free. There were the hardcore activists involved in the movement, but the general public also got involved. The public at large and the mainstream media became activated around Britney Spears to learn about conservatorships for the first time.

From a disability justice perspective, the movement’s rhetoric was double-edged. On the one hand, it shed light on the one of the state’s tools in the criminalization of disability. On the other hand, a lot of Britney’s fans pointed out that she wasn't really disabled and therefore didn’t need to be in a conservatorship, drawing a thick line that isn’t, in reality, that clear. Britney’s diagnoses weren’t known. At the time, she may have “needed” whatever help other disabled people need. Nor is it a fair line to draw. It wasn’t helpful to suggest that there is a substantial population for whom conservatorships might be necessary based on ability. We should be working towards self-reliance for disabled people, as much as possible.

When it comes to a state function like conservatorships or involuntary psychiatric holds, it hardly matters to what degree a person is actually disabled. There are groups of people deemed disabled by the state (or more disabled than they are), like queer people were at a time and often still. There is also the fact that certain conditions of life, like homelessness or being trans or medically disabled, produce trauma and stress as a result of social exclusion and hardship, which can lead to chronic mental illness. We should have an integrative and intersectional approach to mental illness and addiction.

Within the #freeBritney discussion, there were some positive conversations about not stigmatizing disabled people. Many of Britney’s leading advocates promised they understood the broader issues and would continue to advocate for the abolition or at least serious restriction of conservatorships. Britney herself, in her speech before the court, spoke more broadly about the harms of this system.

Then Britney was freed from her conservatorship, and the movement ended. The broader conversation about conservatorships also quieted down. We learned about famous cases of unjust conservatorships—Michael Oher of “The Blind Side” fame, TV host Wendy Williams, actress Amanda Bynes—but there was nowhere near the level of outcry that there was for Britney. (Oher and Bynes were finally freed.) Does Wendy Williams being Black, older, and having chronic illness have anything to do with the lack of attention paid to her particularly horrifying case? Her bank is involved in controlling her fate.)

The state will say conservatorships, psychiatric holds, and “CARE Courts” aren’t designed to criminalize; they’re designed to help. Please read my previous articles on the “prison of help.” The CARE courts are the most obvious example of how disability is criminalized in the guise of help. People with mental illness and addiction are literally funneled through the court system, with strict requirements and punishments for failure to comply. Involuntary psychiatric holds are likewise involuntary punishment, adjudicated by police.

California is a liberal state that has greatly expanded the state’s powers to criminalize disability, in part because it has higher rates of homelessness than elsewhere. But California has always employed conservatorships more broadly than elsewhere. I believe wealth and the entertainment business also play a role. When attorney Tom Girardi was found to be embezzling class action money that was supposed to go to clients, he was immediately put into a conservatorship, based on the idea that he was incompetent. It was a way for the wealthy people connected to him to protect their assets. (He was recently deemed competent by the courts.) Britney Spears’ judge at one point referred to her conservatorship as a unique “business arrangement.” California’s relationship to conservatorships reminds me of Canada’s relationship to euthanasia: something that should be rare and unacceptable (slavery/control and state-facilitated suicide, respectively) becomes locally normalized. Both have been expanded in response to social problems that could be solved by investing in poverty.

California is also on the leading edge of a national movement. Many states are focused on reopening psychiatric facilities to address homelessness—again, instead of addressing the causes of most homelessness. “It’s time to bring back asylums,” an essay in the Wall Street Journal argued. From Trump to New York Democrats, politicians are widely suggesting we need to “help” disabled and homeless people by confining them against their will. California’s conservator model ensures that these people may never have a voice or control over their lives. It is likely to be replicated.

Everyone should be scared about the expansion of a system that legalizes what is essentially slavery—the control of a person’s life and extraction of all of their resources. We should all worry about how easily this can be implemented by parents against children, husbands against wives, the abled against the disabled, and the powerful against the marginalized.