Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren on Thursday asked the federal government to provide more data and improve oversight on conservatorships, saying recent revelations about Britney Spears’ plight has highlighted how the system can “strip people of their basic rights.”
In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Warren and Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey requested “information about data collected by your agency on the prevalence of guardianship and conservatorship in the United States.”
Last week, Spears gave an emotional plea to a judge in which she detailed how her life and money have been dictated by a 13-year conservatorship controlled by her father and others. Spears said the conservatorship has compelled her to take medications like birth control and has prevented her from getting married or having another child.
“This conservatorship is doing me way more harm than good,” Spears said. “I deserve to have a life.”
Warren and Casey cited Spears’ case in the letter, saying she “shined a light on longstanding concerns from advocates who have underscored the potential for financial and civil rights abuses of individuals placed under guardianship or conservatorship, typically older Americans and Americans with intellectual, developmental, and mental health disabilities.”
Comprehensive data regarding conservatorships in the United States, they wrote, are “substantially lacking — hindering policymakers and advocates’ efforts to understand gaps and abuses in the system and find ways to address them.”
The letter noted that while conservatorship decisions are made by state courts, they “raise significant federal spending and policy interests, making imperative that federal officials work collaboratively with state courts to identify gaps in our understanding of problems with America’s guardianship system and develop solutions to address them.”
The senators requested that by July 14, the federal government provide answers about current data collection practices on conservatorships and what resources Congress could provide to improve the government’s data collection system.
Warren is not the only Massachusetts politician who has raised questions about the practice. In a tweet last week, Representative Seth Moulton floated a congressional investigation.
“This Britney Spears conservatorship — a word I didn’t know until yesterday — is some of the craziest [expletive] I’ve seen in a long time,” Moulton wrote. “Do you think Congress should investigate?”
Other politicians have urged congressional action on conservatorships. In March, following the release of “Framing Britney Spears,” a documentary on Spears’ life, two Republican members of Congress submitted a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler to request a hearing on court-ordered conservatorships.
“In recent years, there has been growing public concern about the use of conservatorships to effectively deprive individuals of personal freedoms at the behest of others through the manipulation of the courts,” Representatives Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz said in the letter. “The most striking example is perhaps the case of multi-platinum performing artist Britney Spears.”
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Amanda Kaufman can be reached at amanda.kaufman@globe.com. Follow her @amandakauf1.