A photograph of 13-year-old Jahi McMath is seen on a necklace in Oakland, California in this December 24 file photo.

Reuters/Oakland, California

The family of a California girl who was declared brain dead after complications from a tonsillectomy won an 11th-hour court order on Monday requiring doctors to keep her connected to a breathing machine for at least another week.

Under the latest court order in the case, doctors at Children’s Hospital and Research Centre in Oakland are barred from taking 13-year-old Jahi McMath off a ventilator without her family’s consent before 5pm local time on January 7, relatives and hospital officials said.

The eight-day extension gives the girl’s relatives, who refuse to accept that she is beyond recovery, more time to complete arrangements to have her transferred to an extended-care facility.

But Alameda County Superior Court Judge Evilio Grillo’s decision to extend the previous deadline set in his own restraining order of last week was intended to allow time for appellate review of the case, hospital officials said.

“This is a tragedy that has been postponed for another week,” hospital spokesman Sam Singer told reporters outside the hospital after family members announced Monday’s ruling about an hour before Grillo’s original deadline was due to lapse.

A person declared brain dead is considered legally and physiologically dead under California law, as is the case in many states, and the hospital’s own statements about Jahi have referred to her as deceased.

Grillo acted as the family filed a lawsuit in US District Court on Monday asking a federal judge to intervene to keep Jahi connected to the machine that has kept her heart and lungs going for more than two weeks.

The lawsuit claimed the hospital’s planned “removal of cardiopulmonary support over the objections” of the girl’s mother, and against her religious principles, amounts to an infringement of religious freedom and privacy rights under the US Constitution.

Grillo initially refused last week to extend his restraining order after two paediatric neurologists testified that Jahi had suffered an irreversible loss of all brain activity and was thus medically dead.

Family members said that they were seeking to have her moved to a licenced long-term treatment centre in New York and had raised $20,000 in donations needed to pay for a cross-country airlift.

Jahi’s grandmother Sandra Chatman, herself a registered nurse, told reporters outside the hospital Monday afternoon that the girl had started to move her legs and appeared to be responding to voices of loved ones around her.

The girl’s uncle Omar Sealey also said Jahi was responding to her mother’s voice and touch and that he had video to prove it.

Jahi was admitted to Children’s Hospital on December 9 for surgery to remove her tonsils as a means of treating her sleep apnea.

Shortly after the procedure, she began to bleed, suffered a heart attack and then brain swelling, according to the family’s lawyer, Christopher Dolan.

Hospital officials declared her brain dead on December 12.