DNA: Law requiring arrestees' samples struck down
By Bob Egelko,
San Francisco Chronicle
| 08. 05. 2011
A voter-approved California law requiring police to collect DNA samples from anyone arrested for a felony violates the constitutional privacy rights of people who have not been charged with or convicted of a crime, a state appeals court ruled Thursday.
The law expanded previous statutes that authorized law enforcement officials to take DNA from convicts and suspects with felony records. Approved by 62 percent of the voters in 2004 and effective in 2009, it required anyone arrested on suspicion of a felony to be swabbed on an inner cheek for genetic material, which would then be forwarded to a database accessible to state and local police and the FBI.
The federal government and about half the states have laws allowing DNA collection from some or all arrestees. Supporters say the measures are minimally intrusive and a powerful police resource in unsolved "cold cases."
Responding to a federal court challenge to the California law last year, then-Attorney General Jerry Brown called DNA evidence "the fingerprint of the 21st century" and declared, "This is no more a violation of privacy than you...
Related Articles
By Dhruv Mehrotra , Wired | 08.03.2026
On March 13, 2025, Hugo Moreno-Mendez arrived at the McLennan County Probation Department in Waco, Texas, expecting a routine probation check-in. Instead, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were waiting to arrest him.
According to a criminal complaint reviewed by WIRED...
By Lillian Koll Ross , Ms. Magazine | 07.25.2026
In 1937, the U.S. began one of the largest sterilization campaigns in modern history in its colony of Puerto Rico. By the 1970s, one-third of all Puerto Rican women of childbearing age had been sterilized, most without being properly informed...
By Abigail Ruhman , Association of Health Care Journalists | 07.10.2026
The words reporters use and how publications tell stories can play a significant role in challenging ideas that are harmful to people with disabilities, according to a panel at HJ26.
Leading journalists and disability advocates said reporters and editors...
By Emily Baumgaertner Nunn, The New York Times | 07.20.2026
The National Institutes of Health recently announced a remarkable achievement: the world’s largest database of human genomes, a repository of information that the agency says will help usher in a new era in personalized medicine.
Scientists are already developing clinical...
