Opinion ID: 152917
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Fourth Amendment and Weikert

Text: The Fourth Amendment provides that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.... U.S. Const. amend. IV. A Fourth Amendment search occurs when the government infringes an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to consider reasonable. United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113, 104 S.Ct. 1652, 80 L.Ed.2d 85 (1984); see also Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 33, 121 S.Ct. 2038, 150 L.Ed.2d 94 (2001) (explaining that a Fourth Amendment search does not occur ... unless the individual manifested a subjective expectation of privacy in the object of the challenged search and society [is] willing to recognize that expectation as reasonable (internal quotation marks omitted)). In Weikert, we rejected a Fourth Amendment challenge to the collection and analysis of DNA samples from qualified federal offenders on supervised release. Addressing the threshold question of whether a search or seizure had occurred, we reasoned that the extraction of blood for DNA profiling constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment, and that the creation of the DNA profile and entry of that profile into CODIS represented a further intrusion into the individual's privacy. Id. at 6, 12. Turning to the question of whether the search was reasonable, we recognized the government's important interests in monitoring and rehabilitating supervised releasees, solving crimes, and exonerating innocent individuals through the use of CODIS, and concluded that those interests outweighed the individual's privacy interest given his status as a supervised releasee, the relatively minimal inconvenience occasioned by the blood draw, and the coding of genetic information that, by statute, may be used only for purposes of identification. Id. at 14. Thus, under the totality of the circumstances, we held that neither the extraction of a blood sample nor the creation of a DNA profile and its entry into CODIS was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 15. However, we limited our holding in Weikert to the collection and profiling of the DNA of an individual currently on supervised release, emphasizing that supervised releasees have a lesser expectation of privacy than offenders who have completed their term of release. Id. at 15-16. Boroian now poses a question expressly left open in Weikert: whether it is also constitutional for the government to retain and access a qualified federal offender's DNA profile in CODIS after his or her term of supervised release or probation has ended. Id. at 3. We first address Boroian's Fourth Amendment challenge to the government's retention and use of his DNA profile, and then separately address his challenge to the government's retention of his blood sample.