Tag Archives: Michigan Department of Health and Human Services

Revealing more dishonesty after the second court-ordered release of my original birth record by Michigan’s health department

I published this video explaining how I Iearned that the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services violated a court order by sending me an adulterated birth record copy in 2016, not the actual original version–an intentional act of deception. Click on image to see the video.

This weekend, I closely compared the July 2016 and November 2024 versions of my original birth certificate sent to me from the state of Michigan, each after protracted and time-consuming court processes that should never have occurred.

The “same records,” which should have been identical, were not. It turns out I was sent an incomplete original birth record in July 2016, and I can document that now with these official documents.

Background:

My delays in getting copies of original birth certificate happened only because I was surrendered at birth as an adoptee, denied basic legal and human rights in Michigan and as a citizen of the United States.

I’ve known my birth mother and my birth families since 1989, and my birth mother signed a consent form to release all of my vital records and sent that to what is called the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) in April 1989. The state health department and its vital records staff in 1989 released some records on file, but not my original birth certificate. Their documented practices of hiding my birth identity and birth information—and as I can now prove, again, deceiving me about that—continues to this day

My latest request for my original birth record was fulfilled 80 days after my rush order request for that record in August 2024. The delay and initial denial of my original birth record request had no statutory justification.

On October 4, 2024, MDHHS received a second court order issued on September 19, 2024, on top of the original court order sent in June 2016, and even then MDHHS refused to comply with the court order on October 7, 2024, with a denial letter.

(Note: Only one court order is ever needed for a Michigan-born adoptee to order one, two, or 10 birth certificates, as there is no law restricting the number that can be issued once a judge orders the health department and its staff to comply with the law with a single court order, if the court sides with the adoptee compelling the state to surrender the adoptee’s true record of birth.)

The court had to intervene personally, by its staff, to force MDHHS to release my original birth certificate, again. Those two copies finally arrived on November 4, 2024.

I am only providing a photo of part of the header section of my most recently released birth record copies to prevent bad actors from stealing identifying information.

Latest Two Birth Record Copies Had Many More Birth Facts:

This weekend, I paused and compared the two versions of my original birth record, as the last two months were too busy to focus on the records.

To my surprise, or should I say, not surprise, I saw that the most recent two original birth certificates I ordered and that arrived on November 4, 2024, had more data. The 2016 version left off critical information that the state was legally required to release to me almost nine years ago—by order of a state court.

The information was not innocuous, and the omission was not by accident.

The data were the most critical information aside from my birth and birth mother’s names—namely my health status and birth mother’s health status at the time I arrived in the world from my mother’s womb.

My 2016 original birth record copy, which I now confirmed is an incomplete record (in violation of a court order), did not contain these critical pieces of my birth that are placed on the birth records of all people in Michigan at the time I was born in the mid-1960s:

  • The length of my mother’s pregnancy.
  • My birth weight.
  • Information if my mother was checked for syphilis (this was likely a biased law against women).
  • Information about any complications with my mother’s pregnancy.
  • The types of surgical procedures, if any, during my mother’s delivery.
  • Any birth injury data to the infant.
  • Any congenital-related health issues to the infant.

Former State Registrar Glenn Copeland, who signed the first copy of my original birth record that was not a true and accurate copy, in violation of a court order.

In short, all of the pertinent birth and data about my health and my mom’s health at the time of my birth were intentionally omitted in the birth record copy signed by then-State Registrar Glenn Copeland as a “true and correct representation of birth facts,” and then sent to me. In short, the State Registrar in 2016, along with MDHHS, lied in signing an official vital record sent to me upon order of a Michigan court. And I have legal proof, with official state signatures, that what they sent was not in compliance with the court in 2016.

The second time I received my records, the health workers must have forgotten what they did not include the last time, because they apparently didn’t keep a record of the July 2016 birth certificate record they mailed to me. Otherwise, they would have adulterated two copies just sent to me this time, like they did in July 2016. (I say adulterated, because I can now compare two copies of the same “original” that are attested to by two separate State Registrars.)

(See my video describing MDDHS’s official act violating a Michigan court order.) 

A System Built on Lies and Deception Continues its Worst Ways

I am never surprised by the dishonesty and sheer audacity of public health systems and its officers at the highest level to cheat, lie to, and deceive adoptees when it comes to the most basic document all persons deserve, their original birth certificates. But as my case shows, our records are hidden and then adulterated by the public health staff ordered by a court to comply with state law.

I expect lies and dishonesty at every turn from anyone involved in the U.S. adoption system, based on the weight of carefully researched and published evidence and reporting to date, and my own decades of being lied to and deceived.

Yet, this latest example is still hurtful beyond measure.

The health and public health “professionals” who perpetrate this harm, repeatedly, do this on purpose.

They know what they do, and they do it with impunity. 

Sadly, I have yet to see any reports or coverage of any official accountability for this ongoing malfeasance. Sadly, media, lawmakers, policymakers, or oversight bodies like state auditors (I have contacted that office in Michigan) do not care about the harm, lies, and illegal activities like violating court orders issued in that state.

As for adoptees, we’re on our own, and we continue to have no friends but the mountains.

(Author’s note: I updated this essay on January 11, 2025, with a link and image to my new video explaining the intentional deception by MDHHS when it sent me an incomplete original birth record in July 2016, violating a court order that I receive a true, original, and complete copy of what has always been mine as a basic human right, despite state laws still denying me access to my original identity vital record.)

Filing second request for my original birth certificate being illegally withheld by Michigan

On September 30, 2024, I submitted an additional and completely redundant court order compelling the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) Vital Records office to release two copies of my original birth certificate.

The public health officials at Vital Records already were required by state law to release these records by a court order they received in 2016. Instead, the agency chose to flagrantly disobey the law. The two copies I requested were not released, as required by state law. The agency cashed my check and then coordinated a strategy with a Michigan court how to force an adoptee to take steps that are not prescribed by law. This has been a practice, according to a court official I spoke to anonymously, for two decades—and this is illegal.

I then requested and then received in late September 2024 the necessary court order from the 3rd Circuit Court of Michigan, in Detroit, ordering MDHHS to surrender the two original birth certificates I requested. This court order already was in the agency’s files.

I mailed in that order with a letter reminding MDHHS it had received my request for my records in mid-August six weeks earlier and was failing to adhere to the law.

This has happened to other adoptees in other states, where public health bureaucrats violate law and harm adoptees intentionally, often without any consequences and certainly no investigation of willful wrongdoing in managing critical vital records of a person’s original identity—the single most important vital record of all persons.

I am now waiting for my two original birth certificate copies.

This is the third video in my series documenting the state’s handling of vital records requests by adult adoptees, specifically those who have already secured a legal court order forcing the state to release a copy of an adoptee’s original birth certificate without any barrier such as requests for additional court orders for duplicate copies. I will post another video update on how Vital Records complies, finally, or continues to remain in violation of state managing vital records.

See my first video that I posted when I filed by request for two extra copies of my original birth certificate and my video made after I filed a request for a redundant court order that is not required by law for MDHHS to release my vital record it must do by law already.

Will Michigan comply with state law and release additional copies of an adoptee’s original birth certificate?

On August 13, 2024, I submitted a request to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), with a $62 check, to obtain duplicate copies of my original birth record.

I had to wait 27 years for the vital record to be provided to me in July 2016, after I had provided a signed consent form by my birth mother to release my vital records in 1989. The state and MDHHS only released it after a protracted legal battle that ended with a circuit court in Detroit ordering the state to release my original record of birth.

I am very aware of how this historically anti-adoptee state public health and health agency will likely respond to me as an adoptee. I am simply requesting records provided to all persons but adoptees as a matter of courteous government service with minimal state fees. But I expect this will not be courteous or in compliance with statute. MDHHS has a record of hostile behavior to Michigan-born adoptees, which I have documented now for years.

So I am documenting the process by video and other means to provide a public record of my activity. My goal is to highlight issues of denied legal rights to all adoptees and the discriminatory treatment millions of them face through basic civil processes that should be fulfilled as a basic government service: providing a vital record.

MDHHS provides no public information stating only one copy of a record can be released.
• www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/faq/adoption/can-the-adult-adoptee-obtain-a-copy-of-the-original-birth-certificate
• www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/adult-child-serv/adoption/adoption-faqs

There are several relevant Michigan statutes that set out adoption laws relevant to issues facing adoptees of my generation: 710, 333, 368. None establishes any conditions to deny the release of more than one original birth certificate to someone such as myself who provided a court order already. In fact, the statute states here, § 333.2882 does simply state, the original birth certificate is accessible “upon a court order.” I met this condition with the order already sent to MDHHS in June 2016, forcing it to send me a copy of my original birth certificate. I re-sent MDHHS on August 13, 2024, what I sent earlier in June 2016 and a copy of my vital record it sent me in July 2016 to prove it has already released the record before.

I have already learned from one of my trusted public contacts familiar with state adoption processes that I can expect MDHHS to reject my request, even though there is no law that would allow that.

I will provide additional videos later to document the outcome of what could be another useless fight that only signals that adoptees remain second-class humans subjected to decades-long legal discrimination entirely because of their adoptee status.

See my website for more details about Michigan’s nearly impossible barriers for adoptees to access their original vital records.

State of Michigan refuses to waive excessive fees, in defiance of the state’s FOIA law

On Nov. 17, 2020, I received a reply to my request that the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) waive its wildly excessive fee for requesting public records that, by court precedent and statute, should be released at the lowest charge or without cost when done in the public’s interest.

The unsigned communication by the agency, which oversees Michigan’s adoption system and manages its vital records, ignored my reasonable request.

The reply stated: “MDHHS does not provide for fee appeals in it’s [SIC] publicly available procedures and guidelines. MCL 14.240a(1)(a).”

The state’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) law as written does not prevent any state agency in Michigan from negotiating an appeal.

The legal office of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services did not sign its communication to me, in which it rejected my lawful appeal that the agency waive its exorbitant fees it wrongfully charged for a FOIA request. The reply was sent on Nov. 17, 2020.

The law states: “If a public body charges a labor fee, it is supposed to limit the charge to the hourly rate of the lowest paid employee capable of doing the work. So, for example, a public body isn’t allowed to charge a lawyer’s hourly rate for copying work that can be done by a clerk at a lower rate.” What’s more, the law further states: “A public body may not charge a fee for the cost of its search, examination, review and the deletion and separation of exempt from nonexempt information, unless failure to charge a fee would result in unreasonably high costs to the public body.”

On Nov. 6, 2020, I filed an appeal to MDHHS that it’s charge of $1,168.44 for preparing copies of public records referencing my writings, book, and other communications examining the state’s adoption laws and discriminatory practices against adoptees born in Michigan. I had originally filed my FOIA request, in compliance with the sate’s FOIA statute, on Oct. 12, 2020.

In my appeal, I again documented my request was made in the public interest, and I even referenced how I have shared findings of a previous FOIA request by publishing my book on public policy issues surrounding adoption decision-making by state officials, whose records are by law and by multiple court precedents open to inspection by the public in Michigan.

Requested public records must be released without fees when their release is in the public interest. The statute is clear on this matter. My original request clearly met that test, which I outlined in my appeal again.

My appeal documented in detail that the agency’s arbitrary and capricious charge of the records preparation fee was not consistent with the state’s law and even with legal guidance provided in 1996 to the state by the state’s Attorney General’s office. I even included with my appeal a copy of that legal guidance.

In a clearly worded statement on the interpretation of fee charges within the state’s FOIA statute, former Michigan Attorney General Frank Kelley clearly told the state in 1996 that costs for any means of reproduction, if they were charged, were to be applied at the most cost-effective means possible for the petitioner. He noted: “Section 4 of the FOIA is very specific in authorizing charges, regulating those charges and permitting deposits.” Attorney General Kelley stated: “In calculating the costs under subsection (1), a public body may not attribute more than the hourly wage of the lowest paid, full time, permanent clerical employee of the employing public body to the cost of labor incurred in duplication and mailing and to the cost of examination, review, separation, and deletion. A public body shall utilize the most economical means available for providing copies of public records. A fee shall not be charged for the cost of search, examination, review, and the deletion and separation of exempt from nonexempt information as provided in section 14 unless failure to charge a fee would result in unreasonably high costs to the public body because of the nature of the request in the particular instance, and the public body specifically identifies the nature of these unreasonably high costs. A public body shall establish and publish procedures and guidelines to implement this subsection. [ Emphasis added.]”

Facts, legal guidance from the state’s top law officer, and Michigan state law as written have been discarded with the same degree of regard that the agency has demonstrated to me over my more than three decades engaging it and its staff in seeking my original identity documents. MDHHS has little interest in demonstrating that it respects the rights of ordinary people to whom it is legally accountable or the basic rights of people whose public records it hold.

As someone who does not have the money, time, and resources to fight in an appeals court what is so clearly an incorrect legal interpretation and intentionally calculated effort to avoid releasing public records, I have really two choices. I can pay this unjust fee to get what should be released without a fee by law or abandon a request to make public what already are by statute public documents. Both are bad options.

In the end, MDHHS remains what it has always been: an agency that is driven by institutional interests that frequently ignores the rights of those born in Michigan.

Four steps Michigan can take now to improve its treatment of adoptees

Rudy Owens sports his new made for Michigan T-shirt with the bold idea that treating people equally by law is a basic human right.

One of the reasons I wrote my memoir and critical examination of the U.S. adoption system was to promote equal treatment of all adoptees by law. The way this ultimately will happen is through the force of law, and in the United States, that will be legislative changes on a state by state basis, given past failures to mount a congressional effort to allow adoptees to receive their birth records by a national legal standard. I am not expecting change to happen fast.

Because I am a realist and know that real grand strategy is a long game, played by deeply committed interest groups and persons who understand power, I also am advocating for shorter term victories that can be accomplished as part of incremental progress. Ultimately, I want my work to contribute to changing Michigan’s outdated and discriminatory adoption records laws that deny most Michigan adoptees, like me, their family ancestry, birth records, and equal legal status.

I’ll be promoting these very simple and mostly bureaucratic changes this week (first week of June 2018) when I head to Michigan and meet with lawmakers in person and tell them my story about being denied my identity and records by the state and its public healthy bureaucracy, simply because I was born a bastard and adoptee. 

FOUR EASY STEPS THAT WILL HELP AND PROVIDE NO HARM: 

1. Provide Accurate Data on Adoptees Born in Michigan: The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) can use minimal resources to estimate the number of adoptees and adoptee relinquishments in Michigan and make that information public. Right now there is no accurate figure that is published showing how many Michigan natives were adopted. Knowing their numbers can highlight the impact of laws impacting all adoptees. This figure can be made public and easily accessible on the state’s/MDHHS’s web sites.

2. Track All Requests for Birth Records by All Michigan Adoptees: The MDHHS claims it doesn’t track how many requests are made by adoptees seeking their birth records. Without accurate data, the impact of state laws cannot be measured. The public has a right to know who and how many people are impacted by state laws that deny a class of people equal treatment by law in accessing their records of origin. A tracking system can easily be created in a database with simple information: date of birth, names of adoptee, location of birth, and even reasons for requests. Reports can be prepared that hide the identity of adoptees when they are made public annually or upon request by the legislature or the media/public.

Instead of tracking all adoptee records requests, the state, as of 2009, uses a log of records released only. This does not count requests rejected or all requests for records assistance, according to an MDHHS spokesperson’s statement from July 2016. As of that month, 549 records requests were fulfilled since fall 2009, and it is unknown if those included original birth records. There is no data on adoptee records requests fulfilled prior to fall 2009, according to MDHHS.

3. Conduct a Performance Audit of the Central Adoption Registry (CAR): The CAR, run by Connie Stevens, is a one-person office with extensive gatekeeper authority to manage all birth records requests from adoptees sent from courts or agencies if adoptees’ birth records information may or may not be released. Even the office’s superior, Glenn Copeland, defers decisions to the CAR. Though the office has authority to approve the release of adoptee birth records, it claims it cannot be contacted by adoptees, many of whom report consistent unprofessional treatment when they seek help from the CAR with Michigan’s overly complex adoptee records system. To ensure the office is treating all requests fairly and acting impartially to serve all residents, a basic performance audit can be conducted to highlight problems and solutions that ensure equitable service to the public. (FYI, here is where you can contact the CAR, and do not expect calls back quickly, if you get them.)

4. Provide Additional Staff Resources to Answer Adoptee Questions: Because the CAR claims it does not help adoptees, the state can dedicate staffing time from other vital records personnel to handle questions from adoptees trying to navigate Michigan’s complex adoptee records laws. This is a principle of basic good governance, to assist and help the public navigate state systems and provide good customer service. A contact number and email should be made visible on the MDHHS website for adoptee records information.

Let me know what you think of these ideas. What would you propose? Contact me here. Thanks.