In San Francisco, a federal appeals court declared...

In San Francisco, a federal appeals court declared unconstitutional a 2000 law that requires federal prisoners or those on supervised release to give blood samples for the FBI's DNA databank. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the first federal appeals court to address the federal DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Act, said requiring convicts to give blood for a criminal database is a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights against illegal searches. Ruling 2-1, the San Francisco-based court said it was an unlawful invasion of privacy because the samples were taken without legal suspicion that the convicts were involved in other crimes. The DNA samples are turned over to the FBI. The results are analyzed and placed in an FBI databank open to law enforcement nationally. "We conclude that forced blood extractions pursuant to the DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Act of 2000 violate the Fourth Amendment because they constitute suspicionless searches with the objective of futhering law enforcement purposes." The court covers Arizona, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Idaho, Washington state, Montana, Nevada and Alaska.