The Gault Center and Juvenile Law Center Amicus Brief, Leslie v. New York City
The Gault Center and Juvenile Law Center filed an amicus brief in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals involving New York Police Department’s collection and storage of DNA.
From the summary of argument:
Amici write in support of Appellant to address the particularly harmful impact that Appellees’ DNA collection and storage practices have on children, especially Black and Latine youth. Modern research confirms what the law has long recognized: adolescents differ from adults in both brain development and behavior, and they are entitled to heightened protections under the law. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that developmental differences between children and adults matter when assessing children’s culpability and treatment by law enforcement. See, e.g., J.D.B. v. North Carolina, 564 U.S. 261, 265 (2011) (holding “that a child’s age properly informs the Miranda custody analysis”); id. at 268-77. Federal courts and New York law also recognize the unique protections owed to children entangled with the legal system to protect them from ongoing harm and stigma. See McKeiver v. Pennsylvania, 403 U.S. 528, 551-53 (1971) (White, J., concurring) (“[T]he state legislative judgment [is] not to stigmatize the juvenile delinquent by branding him a criminal; his conduct is not deemed so blameworthy that punishment is required to deter him or others.”). Appellees’ practice of collection and storage of children’s DNA samples runs counter to these requirements, exposing children to unnecessary and prolonged surveillance by law enforcement, contradicting the confidentiality protections of the juvenile legal system, and putting young people at risk of longterm harm.
The harm of these policies disparately impacts Black and Latine youth due to their overrepresentation at every stage of the criminalization process. Because Black and Latine youth are disproportionately subjected to police contact, permitting DNA collection from these encounters effectively creates a permanent racialized genetic surveillance system built on existing discriminatory policing patterns. Compounding this harm, the NYPD relies on abandonment sampling—a technique in which DNA is collected from discarded items without a person’s knowledge or consent. The NYPD itself has found abandonment sampling to be the most errorprone method of DNA collection. This heightens the risk of wrongful prosecution for Black and Latine youth, whose DNA is disproportionately likely to be in the database in the first place.
