SOCIAL JUSTICE BLOG

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Can Britney Vote?
Voting Rights, Conservatorship, Britney Spears Teddy Basham-Witherington Voting Rights, Conservatorship, Britney Spears Teddy Basham-Witherington

Can Britney Vote?

The plight of Britney Spears, the pop star who has been under a conservatorship for the past 13 years, has plastered the news headlines recently. While even a quick skimmer of the Britney saga suggests the potential for financial abuse, like how much she pays the people who continue to benefit from her conservatorship, and restrictions on her reproductive rights such as whether she can stop using birth control, we don’t know if Ms. Spears can vote. If she is like thousands of other people whose voting rights are curtailed through a court-ordered guardianship (called conservatorship in California), she may have been disenfranchised without any consideration of whether she in fact remains capable of voting. Categorical bans on voting by people subject to guardianship or conservatorship exist in at least a dozen states and may be ripe for legal challenge.

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