#2021

#FreeBritney

On February 1, 2008, a Los Angeles judge approved a temporary conservatorship over the 26-year-old pop singer Britney Spears, naming her father Jamie Spears co-conservator of her person and estate. The arrangement was supposed to last days. It lasted 13 years and 9 months. During that period, Spears released four studio albums, performed a four-year Las Vegas residency that grossed approximately $138 million, was the subject of two New York Times documentaries, and could not, by court order, leave the house without permission. The conservatorship was terminated on November 12, 2021, after a 24-minute testimony in which Spears told Judge Brenda Penny that she had been forced onto lithium, prevented from removing an IUD, and that everyone involved 'should be in jail.' The fan movement that had been arguing this for a decade — #FreeBritney — turned out to be right.