Objections to giving a DNA sample.

Every now and again a client wants to object to giving a DNA sample once at the Brig. Objections based on religion, the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, and the Fifth Amendment, won’t work.

Pursuant to congressional authorization, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) established the Combined DNA Index System (“CODIS”), a national database containing electronic DNA profiles of convicted offenders from the state and federal systems, evidence from crime scenes, and unidentified human remains that allows government officials to match an electronic DNA profile to its donor’s identity for “law enforcement identification purposes,” “judicial proceedings,” and “criminal defense purposes.” 42 U.S.C. § 14132(a), (b)(3).
To facilitate the efficacy of the CODIS, the DNA Act directs the Federal Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”) to collect “a tissue, fluid, or other bodily sample . . . on which a[n] . . . analysis of the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) identification information” can be carried out, id. § 14135a(c), from “each individual in the custody of the [BOP] who is, or has been, convicted of a qualifying Federal offense,” which includes all felonies, sexual abuse, and crimes of violence, id. § 14135a(a)(1)(B), (d). [Substitute DoD for BOP.]
The DNA Act serves the compelling governmental interest in accurately and expeditiously solving past and future crimes in order to protect the public and ensure conviction of the guilty and exoneration of the innocent.
Having concluded that the government has a compelling interest in extracting and storing Kaemmerling’s DNA information for identification, we have no trouble concluding that application of the DNA Act to Kaemmerling “is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.”

Kaemmerling v. Lappin, 553 F.3d 669 (D.C. Cir. 2009).