‘FreeBritney’ goes to DC to change the laws that caged the pop star - Sydney Morning Herald

Washington: When Cassandra Dumas heard that Britney Spears was going to have a residency in Las Vegas in 2019 she was thrilled.

It was around this time that Dumas started taking an interest in Spears’s conservatorship - the mysterious legal arrangement, dating back to 2008, in which Spears’s father Jamie and a legal team control her estate and many of her life decisions.

California had previously been the hub of the Free Britney movement but activists are now campaigning in the US capital.

The release of the message sparked the #FreeBritney movement, a campaign by Spears fans for an end to the conservatorship arrangement.

Dumas’s belief that Spears’s conservatorship is “a travesty and a massive injustice” only deepened in June when Spears gave testimony saying that was afraid of her father and that the conservatorship team had blocked her from removing an IUD birth control device.

Britney Spears pictured here in 2018, says the conservatorship will not allow her to have other children.Credit:AP.

“I’m here to get rid of my dad and charge him with conservatorship abuse,” Spears told the court at a subsequent hearing.

The US west coast has been the hub of the #FreeBritney movement, reflecting the fact that Spears lives in Los Angeles and the legal process has been playing out in the California court system.

They introduced her to three other Spears fans in Washington, and together they launched Free Britney America - the movement’s first chapter in the US capital.

This week Dumas participated in a virtual press conference to launch the FREE Act, a bipartisan bill, inspired by the Spears case, to reform the conservatorship and guardianship system that has been introduced into the US House of Representatives.

Making common cause with the #Free Britney movement, guardianship reform advocate Rick Black.

Black, 61, is by no means a Spears aficionado and had not taken much interest in her conservatorship battle until two years ago.

It was only when a journalist called him to ask about Spears’s situation that he started digging into the issue and decided to get in touch with the Free Britney movement.