UPDATE: After 13 years, Britney’s conservatorship finally ended in November 2021, restoring her right to make decisions about her own life. But there are still over 1 million people with disabilities living under some form of conservatorship or guardianship in the U.S. — people who deserve access to their civil liberties, too.

There were many shocking moments in Britney Spears’ 24-minute statement calling for an end to her conservatorship, delivered Wednesday to a Los Angeles probate judge by phone. The pop star, who has lived under a conservatorship chiefly overseen by her father for 13 years, described grueling labor demands, constant surveillance, being cut off from friends, and being confined against her will. As Spears made her case for the judge, one startling detail stood out amidst the laundry list of abuses: Although she would like to have children and be married, her conservators refuse to allow her to have her intrauterine device (IUD) removed, she said, “because they don’t want me to be able to have children.”

Fans, onlookers, and the media seized on this revelation, many expressing shock and dismay that a conservator could require a 39-year-old woman to use birth control against her will. “Britney HAS to keep an IUD in under her conservatorship?” asked one horrified Twitter user. “How is any of this legal/okay?”

Unfortunately, losing your reproductive freedom because you are in a conservatorship is very often legal. When a court puts a person under a conservatorship or guardianship, the court is taking away that person’s right to make their own choices. And often, that includes reproductive choices. Even though a conservatorship is a highly invasive, severe loss of rights and liberty, courts approve them routinely, and almost always allow them to continue permanently.

Spears’ experience is part of a long history of people with disabilities — most often people of color — being forcibly sterilized, forced to end pregnancies, or losing the right to raise their own children. Thanks to Spears’ large platform and following, her demands to be freed from her conservatorship have been heard. But there are untold thousands of people living under this same type of restrictive structure, who have lost their rights to reproductive freedom, often permanently.

As the eugenics movement gained popularity in the early 20th century, numerous states passed laws allowing for the involuntary sterilization of people with disabilities. In 1927, an 8-1 decision from the Supreme Court approved forced sterilization laws, in a sweeping and bigoted opinion penned by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. The plaintiff in that case, Buck v. Bell, was a woman named Carrie Buck, who challenged her forced sterilization. She had been deemed “feebleminded” by a family that had taken her in as a servant, and whose relative had raped her. To cover up the resulting pregnancy, the family had doctors commit her to an institution where they planned to sterilize her. Justice Holmes’ opinion for the court’s majority stated:

“It is better for the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.”

This opinion had profound consequences. Between 1907 and 1945, upwards of 70,000 people — overwhelmingly poor people of color — were sterilized involuntarily under eugenic sterilization laws. California’s forced sterilization law was not repealed until 1979, and forced sterilization in California prisons continued even after that. Buck v. Bell has never been overturned.

While the bald cruelty of Holmes’ words may seem antiquated, the practice of controlling the reproductive choices of people with disabilities continues today. Then, as now, forced sterilization or birth control is often cast by courts and conservators as a protective mechanism in the best interest of a person with a disability, or for their safety. Some guardians and conservators who rob conservatees of these choices are certainly acting out of genuine concern and love for the person in their care. But the choice to have or not have a child, and when to do so, is a fundamental right. Many people with disabilities, even significant disabilities, have and raise children in loving, safe families. The denial of that right is too often based in stigma, paternalism, and stereotypes, and can have a lasting mental, emotional, and physical impact on the person deprived of their reproductive autonomy.

We still don’t know the specific terms or details of Spears’ conservatorship. We don’t know whether she identifies as a person with disabilities, or what private medical conversations she or her conservators have had about these choices. But we now know that she has stated that she wants to have another child and be a parent, and that she is being prevented from doing so. And we know that she has said that she wants to get out of the conservatorship. As we’ve said before, the ease with which people with disabilities are placed under the control of a conservator or guardian and stripped of their civil rights and liberties is a deeply concerning, systemic issue, and what Spears has shared publicly fits the pattern of harm and deprivation of autonomy that happens all too often across the country.

Thankfully, an IUD is not a permanent method of birth control, and Spears should be able to have a child after its removal, should she still want to. We are hopeful that thanks to Spears’ large platform and the spotlight on her statement, the judge will heed her request to restore her rights. There are many less-restrictive support systems, like supported decision-making, that she and trusted family or friends can use.

Justice Holmes’ offensive and bigoted rhetoric may no longer be in use, but Buck v. Bell is still the law of the land, with few exceptions. As The Daily Beast reports, more than half of states permit the forced sterilization of people under conservatorships in some capacity. And across the country, people still rely on stereotypes and assumptions to take reproductive choices out of the hands of people with disabilities — especially BIPOC and marginalized people with disabilities. The coercive power and control handed to conservators is a disability rights crisis, and an insult to the reproductive liberty of people with disabilities.

Kevin Jones* is sitting in a jail cell because of a faulty battery. Jones, a Black man, was released on a pending criminal charge and probation supervision and ordered by officials in Oakland County, Michigan to wear an electronic location monitoring device while he awaited further hearings in his cases. Yet, through no fault of his own, the device (called a “tether” in Michigan) failed to keep a charge due to an inexplicable malfunction. In November 2020, Jones was sleeping in his home when police officers broke in, woke him up, and arrested him for violating the conditions of his release. The violation? A dead battery.

Jones grew up in Canton, Michigan with a single mother who worked tirelessly as an EMT. He is a father of three young children who live in Ohio. When his children were newborns, he would often drive hours to pick them up, bring them back to Michigan, and keep them for two to three months at a time. His mother, Ms. Jones, recalls, “He would bring them by and asked me to babysit them and I would give him a time to get back to pick the kids up, because I have a strict bedtime regimen. If I told my son to be at my house by 9:00 p.m. to pick up the children, he would show up at 8:58 p.m., always on time.” Now that he is incarcerated, Jones’ children are missing a father. This past Father’s Day weekend, they were not able to enjoy quality time with their dad.

Jones recounts the day it all happened — the day that triggered his loss of freedom:

“My tether died when I was asleep … Police came to my home to verify that I was there, and they woke me up. I looked [and realized that] the tether had died and [so I] charged the tether back up. A week or two later, I went in for a violation hearing and the judge said they were revoking my bond, even though I was at home [where I was supposed to be] when the police found me.”

Unfortunately, that was not the last time Jones had charging difficulties. The judge gave him two weeks after the violation hearing to turn himself in. During that two-week period, the same tether died a second time, in late December 2020. Then, despite diligent his efforts to charge it, the ankle monitor died a third time, the day before Jones was supposed to turn himself in.

Throughout the various instances of battery failure, Jones kept in touch with the tether company and cooperated with authorities, informing them about the device’s malfunctions and explaining the charging problem. Despite his efforts to comply with the terms of his pretrial release, it was abruptly terminated, and he was sentenced to two years in jail without having a chance to speak at the violation hearing.

To make things worse, Jones was moved from the Oakland County Jail — a facility the ACLU has sued for its mismanagement of the pandemic — to a prison in Jackson, Michigan. Following the transfer in March 2021, Jones contracted COVID-19. Jones has underlying conditions, including asthma and a heart murmur, that make catching COVID-19 particularly dangerous. Since catching the virus, Jones reports suffering from “major headaches, coughing, and scratchy throats.” The conditions of his incarceration are poor; Jones says after employees move infected people out of the general population, “they don’t clean the cells that we were in before we were moved to the COVID-19 unit.”

Throughout this ordeal, Jones was set up to fail: ordered to wear a faulty device, and punished when the battery died — not only with incarceration, but with a deadly virus. Prior to the battery failure, Jones was merely a man on pretrial release. He was not convicted of his pending firearms charge — he was merely accused of a crime while trying to navigate the terms of his probation. Yet the repeated battery failures landed him in prison, making it all but impossible for Jones to lodge an effective defense against his pending charge.

Restrictive pretrial monitoring should alarm us all for several reasons. First, it infringes due process rights, because monitoring is often imposed by judges who do not consider whether the accused person poses a risk of failing to appear for court, or otherwise poses a danger to the community. Second, it undermines the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Third, monitoring creates an unchecked privacy intrusion by private companies (often working at the behest of, or in partnership with, the government), and amounts to an unreasonable, warrantless search. Fourth, it impedes movement, freedom, and autonomy — preventing people from obtaining employment, finding housing, and participating in everyday social and family life. In short, once a person is accused of a crime and released on a pretrial electronic monitor, they are treated as if they committed the alleged offense, and are stripped of fundamental rights and freedoms.

As with all aspects of the criminal legal system, these burdens are disproportionately imposed on Black and Brown people. Unfortunately, Jones’ story is not an outlier: Across the nation, malfunctions areBlack Lives Matter activist Jeremy “Mohawk” Johnson has documented, via TikTok, that his ankle monitor falsely reported him away from home more than 60 times while he awaited trial in Chicago. Johnson emphasized that monitors make it difficult to find jobs, attend medical appointments, go grocery shopping, take care of family, and sleep (sometimes the device emits voice alerts in the middle of the night).

Abolishing restrictive monitoring is the next frontier of criminal, economic, and racial justice. Once touted as a reform or alternative to incarceration, the use of ankle monitors is instead helping to fuel mass incarceration and expand its reach. Ankle monitors both create circumstances where people feel pressured to plead guilty, and subject people to a long list of onerous technical violations. In many places, individuals have to pay for their own monitoring, racking up considerable costs or facing incarceration if they can’t afford them. And there is no evidence that these devices confer any benefit to public safety or prevent flight. No wonder experts like Michelle Alexander call such monitoring “the newest Jim Crow” and “e-carceration.”

Despite their considerable harms, the use of electronic monitoring is on the rise, and has increased 140 percent in the U.S. between 2005 and 2015. If this is where criminal legal reform is headed, we need all hands on deck. That’s why the ACLU is fighting to reduce reliance on electronic monitoring, to ensure broader protections for people subjected to its restrictions, and for a world in which no one is subjected to the nightmare Jones is living through.

*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of those who shared their stories.

“A Border Patrol facility is no place for a child,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in March 2021 as unaccompanied children — many trapped in dangerous circumstances by Trump era policies — began crossing the border in increasing numbers due to the backlog created by President Trump’s shutdown of asylum.

We could not agree more.

Border Patrol facilities have been deadly places for children — notorious for their horrible conditions, mistreatment and verbal abuse by Border Patrol agents. Between January and March 2021 the number of children in Border Patrol facilities rose to a record high of over 5,000, with reported average time in custody topping 133 hours (over five days). In some cases children spent a staggering 18 or more days in Border Patrol facilities. Recent data shows over 1,000 children currently in Border Patrol custody, the highest since late April.

To address this unacceptable and life threatening reality, the Biden administration moved quickly to set up emergency intake site (EIS) facilities to get children out of Border Patrol custody and transfer them to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — the agency tasked with uniting children with sponsors in the United States. However, the administration’s efforts to protect the well-being of unaccompanied children requires further action to ensure humane conditions in these new facilities. Particularly in Texas, where migrant children have become the latest target of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s political boondoggle.

One of the largest EIS facilities was quickly constructed on Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, with an eventual capacity to hold some 10,000 children. Over 5,000 children were quickly moved to the Fort Bliss facility, despite a lack of case management services and housing conditions consisting only of massive tents holding upwards of 1,000 children each.

We toured the facility in April 2021, shortly after it opened, and again in May 2021. While we observed the masses of children housed in football field sized tents, noted the deficiencies in case management resources to reunite children with loved ones, and worried about the children’s health in the west Texas desert heat, we were not allowed to speak to children to get a full view of their experience.

In late May 2021, Rep. Veronica Escobar was able to speak with children held at Fort Bliss. Shockingly, children she spoke to had languished in the facility for over 40 days, boys reported only having one change of clothes, and children desperately sought updates on the status of their cases.

Declarations filed in court this week by Flores counsel included one 13-year-old girl held at Fort Bliss for 58 days, and data indicates that some 100 children had been at the site for over 60 days, some since it opened on March 30, 2021. Employees reported the level of distress among children at the facility was so alarming that children are constantly monitored for self-harm, panic attacks, and escape attempts. Federal officials have reportedly banned pencils, pens, nail clippers, and regular toothbrushes out of concern that children would harm themselves.

Just this week, staff at Fort Bliss levied new disturbing allegations of sexual assault, lack of medical care, and unhygienic conditions at the facility. As simply put by Rep. Escobar, the conditions at Fort Bliss are “absolutely unacceptable.”

The Biden administration must do better. To start, the administration should ensure basic standards are met at all EIS facilities. At minimum, HHS should immediately hire more case managers to reunite children, expand capacity at non-EIS licensed facilities, and co-locate HHS personnel in Border Patrol facilities to evaluate for release to sponsors prior to transfer to EIS facilities. Independent medical and child welfare experts should be consulted to ensure improved conditions.

Instead of supporting the administration’s efforts to improve the health and safety of these children, Texas is actively attempting to worsen care for children. On June 1, 2021, Abbott issued a proclamation targeting unaccompanied children by potentially shutting down licensed federal shelters for vulnerable children, further obstructing efforts to improve conditions for children in Texas.

Texas is home to approximately 30 percent of all state licensed shelters contracted to house unaccompanied children, according to a 2020 report. Requiring shelters to be licensed has historically provided for more humane and child appropriate conditions for youth waiting to reunite with sponsors. By potentially undermining federal efforts to move children to safer facilities, and out of EIS facilities like Fort Bliss, Abbott is placing children directly in harm’s way by shutting down facilities better equipped to care for children.

The Biden administration’s efforts to respect the rights of children, protect them from the horrors of Border Patrol custody, and reduce the number of children held at Fort Bliss are laudable aims, but it is past time to ensure humane conditions for children at Fort Bliss and other emergency facilities.

The Biden administration must stand steadfast in its commitment to children and find humane alternatives that do not result in longer stays in Border Patrol custody. And if Abbott’s effort succeeds in limiting licensed bedspace in the state, the administration must weather the political storm without sacrificing standards for the care of unaccompanied children in Texas.