Public Breastfeeding May Be Legal in Mich., But It's Not OK in My Court, Judge Told Mom
Updated: A woman fighting a Michigan boating ticket that had already resulted in a bench warrant says she had no choice but to take her 5-month-old with her to a Tuesday hearing as he recuperated from a fever.
Quiet for more than two hours as she waited for her case to be called, the boy then awakened and needed to eat. So, since she was wearing appropriate clothing for the purpose, she breastfed him, Natalie Hegedus tells WWMT.
This didn’t go over well with the judge, when Hegedus’ case was called while her son, Landen, was still eating.
“You think that’s appropriate in here?” Judge Robert Hentchel asked her, according to a transcript of the 7th District Court case in Paw Paw.
Hegedus replied that she had to feed her son, and it was legal to do so.
“Ma’am, it’s my courtroom, I decide what’s appropriate in here, come on up, okay,” Hentchel then tells her. “You have to understand that a judge, the laws don’t apply in a courtroom, the judge’s law applies, do you understand that?”
Hegedus tells the station she wouldn’t have minded if the issue had been handled more discretely, but she felt publicly humiliated by the judge’s tone and the implication that she had done something “dirty” by nursing her baby.
Chief Judge Paul Hamre said he felt Hentchel had done nothing wrong, WWMT reports, calling it “inappropriate” for a defendant to appear in a criminal court holding a baby and noting that Hentchel nonetheless hadn’t sanctioned Hegedus or even asked her to leave the courtroom.
Supporters of Hegedus are now planning to hold a “nurse-in” outside the Van Buren County courthouse later this month.
Updated on Nov. 17 to include information about “nurse-in.”
