OAKLAND, Calif. – Children’s Hospital Oakland said it will not help the family of Jahi McMath fulfill their request to have the 13-year-old, who had been declared brain dead after a tonsillectomy on Dec. 9, moved to another hospital.
  A possible compromise surfaced Thursday when the family’s attorney and the girl's relatives said they had found a nursing home that was willing to keep caring for Jahi even though two doctors have described her condition as irreversible. To be eligible for admission to the facility, however, the girl needs to have feeding and breathing tubes surgically implanted, they said.
The hospital, however, has refused, citing a judge’s recent ruling that the girl can be taken off a ventilator. That ruling came after a court-appointed doctor gave his second opinion, confirming the hospital’s original diagnose that the girl had irreversible brain death.
“We are aware that the family’s attorney has stated the family hopes to transfer Jahi’s body to another facility. However, he has refused to identify the facility to which they hope to transfer Jahi’s body,” Dr. David Durand, chief of pediatrics at the hospital, said in a Dec. 26 statement. “The family’s attorney has stated that multiple surgical procedures need to be performed on Jahi’s body before this possible transfer can be completed.”
But, he added, “Children’s Hospital Oakland does not believe that performing surgical procedures on the body of a deceased person is an appropriate medical practice. Children’s Hospital Oakland continues to extend its wishes for peace and closure to Jahi McMath’s family.”
The family’s lawyer, Christopher Dolan, said Friday that he is prepared to go to federal court to force the hospital to insert breathing and feeding tubes into the eighth grader.
Dolan told The Associated Press that he is drafting a civil rights lawsuit alleging that Children's Hospital Oakland's refusal to perform the procedures that would allow 13-year-old Jahi McMath to be transferred to a long-term care facility violates her family's religious, due process rights and privacy rights.
"The hospital seems to feel that only it can make decisions and in that sense, you have, I have and everyone has the right to privacy over our health care," Dolan said. "It touches on some very significant issues, namely, who controls the decisions when you are dead or alive." 
 The legal maneuver would need to be taken quickly. Judge Evelio Grillo ruled Tuesday that Jahi's mother, Nailah Winkfield, had until 5 p.m. Monday Dec. 30 to appeal his decision to allow the hospital to take her daughter off life support.
If Winkfield decides to take the case to federal court, Dolan said he would also seek a temporary restraining order to prevent the hospital from disconnecting the girl from the ventilator that is keeping her body functioning.
Jahi underwent tonsil surgery at Children's Hospital on Dec. 9 to treat sleep apnea. After she awoke from the operation, her family said, she started bleeding heavily from her mouth and went into cardiac arrest.