MUSKEGON (WWJ) - In an emotional West Michigan courtroom, a judge granted a family's request to stop the organ donation process for a woman on life support after loved ones claimed she wouldn't have wanted "her organ taken from her."
Muskegon County Chief Judge Kenneth Hoopes sided with the family of Jazmine Phillips this week in case that has rippled throughout the state as it involved Michigan driver's licenses.
According to the family’s attorney, Phillips developed a headache on Feb. 14 and ultimately went to Trinity Health Muskegon for treatment.
But 16 hours later, things took a drastic turn.
"It was determined that she had too much swelling on her brain and no activity,” said attorney Michael Oakes via WOOD.
She was pronounced brain dead on Feb. 16.
As Phillips was placed on life support, her status as a designated organ donor ignited the court case. While Phillips did put on her driver's license that she wanted to be an organ donor, family members claimed that Phillips had recently mentioned she wanted to change her status when her license expired in 2026.
Oakes said that Phillips' recent wishes overrode her driver's license designation from over a decade ago.
Gift of Life Michigan, however, argued that the family appeared to disregard what Phillips' wanted and when they arrived at the hospital to collect her organs, they family pushed back.
"On her driver’s license, which was filled out, and which was done on her own will and volition, and which was submitted to the Secretary of State, this is not a document that was submitted to Gift of Life, so we’ve got objective evidence that Ms. Phillips intended to make the gift,” said Jill Erickson, lawyer for Gift of Life Michigan.
The judge heard arguments from both sides, but it was statements from a girlfriend of Phillip's aunt that ultimately swayed Hoopes.
“The entire ride, all I could hear her saying — to her auntie, she wasn’t saying it to no one else but her aunt — ‘I don’t want them to kill me. I want to keep my organs. I don’t want them to have my organs,’” the girlfriend said.
Hoopes said that the testimony from the family member's girlfriend held more weight in his decision because of her legal distance to Phillip's.
“When the court looks at the statements of Miss Phillips and … this unfortunate definition of an organ donation may equate to someone being, their life being terminated prematurely by the hospital — again, the court finds that to be extremely unfortunate — but I do believe that that is what was going on in the mind of Miss Phillips at the time that she made her declaration and therefore the court is going to grant the petition,” Hoopes said.
A spokesperson for Gift of Life Michigan said the organized respects the court’s decision and offered their deepest sympathies for the Phillips family.
In an email to WOOD, Gift for Life Michigan said they would not appeal the ruling.
Phillips' family celebrated the decision, stating that she will be surrounded by loved ones, including her two sons, during her "last moments that we will have her here on earth."
“I am so happy. You can’t tell me what a community can’t do,” Phillips’ mother Kameka Johnson told Nexstar’s WOOD after the ruling. “God turned a miracle today. She belongs to us, not to the state. I am overjoyed and I thank everybody for sharing, watching, liking, reposting, showing up in numbers. I’m so grateful.”