The conservatorship of Britney Spears has taken an extraordinary turn with the embattled pop princess claiming that the case presents a sufficiently important federal issue to be removed from state to federal court.

The removal action is a creative, though probably doomed, attempt to extricate Spears from the control of the conservators –- her father, James Spears, and attorney Andrew Wallet. It also seeks a “measure of relief” in her child custody battle with ex-husband Kevin Federline.

The Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner who put Britney under a temporary conservatorship earlier this month has ruled she cannot hire her own lawyer without the conservators' approval. But Jon Eardley, an attorney with offices in Jericho, N.Y., and Washington, D.C., filed the removal action on her behalf in Los Angeles federal court Feb. 14.

Federal law allows the removal of “Any civil action of which the district courts have original jurisdiction founded on a claim or right arising under the Constitution, treaties or laws of the United States.” In a recent decision, the U.S. Supreme Court said a state court case may qualify for removal if it

raise[s] a stated federal issue, actually disputed and substantial, which a federal forum may entertain without disturbing any congressionally approved balance of federal and state judicial responsibilities. Grable & Sons v. Darue Engineering, 545 U.S. 308 (2005).

According to Eardley, the Britney Spears conservatorship meets the Grable test because the conservators have supplemented the prescription drugs she receives under the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act “with a near total deprivation of her civil rights.”

Britney is “being confined by the conservator to the private prison of her own home,” argues Eardley, and

It is submitted to this court that the deprivation of her civil liberties by the conservator is so severe as to interfere with the effectiveness of the [prescribed] medications.

Eardley also says removal of the conservatorship would not disturb the balance of power between state and federal courts because “the recurrence of this question would be rare due to Ms. Spears' unenviable status of having virtually no privacy in her life ... Ms. Spears may be the most public person who has ever lived.”

But Grable involved a dispute over whether the IRS properly notified a property owner that the property would be sold to satisfy a federal tax delinquency. In upholding federal jurisdiction, the Supreme Court cited the “national interest in providing a federal forum for federal tax litigation.”

The government, it said, “has a direct interest in the availability of a federal forum to vindicate its own administrative action, and buyers (as well as tax delinquents) may find it valuable to come before judges used to federal tax matters.”

A federal judge would be stretching Grable beyond its limits to provide a federal forum for Spears since, among other things, it is state court judges who have the expertise in conservatorship cases. “This is strictly a state matter,” one family law attorney said.

By Matthew Heller
2/19/08