Michigan Families File Motion to Reopen Newborn Genetic Data Case After U.S. Supreme Court Privacy Ruling

For Immediate Release | July 11, 2026
https://olcplc.com/public/media?1783781835

Plaintiffs in the long-running constitutional challenge to Michigan’s newborn screening program today filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan asking the Court to alter or amend its July 8, 2026 Revised Final Judgment in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 29, 2026 decision in Chatrie v. United States.

The motion argues that Chatrie constitutes a subsequent contrary view of controlling law that fundamentally alters the analysis of Plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment claims concerning the State’s perpetual custody of newborns’ re-identifiable genetic and medical data.

The lawsuit resulted into the destruction of 3.5 million blood spots belonging to Michigan newborns since the 1980s. However, the federal Sixth Circuit ruled that retention of the infants’ private medical and genetic data (without permission and a warrant) was not unlawful. 

“The Supreme Court has now made clear that the Fourth Amendment protects people, not merely property,” said Philip L. Ellison, counsel for the Plaintiffs and principal of Outside Legal Counsel PLC. “Michigan parents and children should not be permanently stripped of any meaningful control over their most intimate genetic information—data that reveals family medical history, genetic predispositions, and core aspects of personal identity—simply because the State holds the copy and the re-identification key.”

Background on the Case
Michigan law requires every infant born in the state to undergo newborn screening within hours of birth. Medical personnel collect five or six blood spots on a filter paper card along with demographic information. After initial testing for more than 50 genetic conditions, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) and the Michigan Neonatal Bio-Bank (operated by Defendant Krause) retain the specimens and associated electronic records.

Following earlier proceedings, physical blood spots associated with the Plaintiff-children were returned or destroyed. However, the linked electronic demographic, physiological, and highly sensitive genetic/medical data remains in MDHHS’s possession, custody, and control indefinitely in its LIMS database. MDHHS alone holds the re-identification key and authorizes secondary uses—including research, public health activities, and potential law enforcement access—without individualized parental notice or consent. This system applies to nearly every child born in Michigan.

In 2023, after a five-day bench trial, the district court ruled that the post-screening retention and use violated the Fourth Amendment under a search-and-privacy analysis. However, the Sixth Circuit reversed in 2025, treating retention exclusively as a “seizure” and holding that Plaintiffs failed to prove a possessory interest in the data. The privacy question was never reached on the merits. The Supreme Court later declined review without explanation. 

Legal scholars have questioned that outcome. Professor Bernard W. Bell of Rutgers Law School has also written directly about the constitutional issue presented by the case. In Newborn Screening Programs & the Fourth Amendment, Bell argues that the Sixth Circuit’s property-focused approach overlooks the deeper privacy interests created when the government retains newborn blood spots and associated genetic data for long-term storage and secondary use. His central point is that the Fourth Amendment protects people, not merely property, and that the absence of a traditional ownership interest should not end the constitutional inquiry.

Bell’s analysis closely tracks the argument now before the district court. He explains that treating possessory interests as the sole gateway to Fourth Amendment protection prevents courts from ever asking whether indefinite retention, research access, re-identification, and other secondary uses are reasonable. Plaintiffs contend that the Supreme Court’s decision in Chatrie now confirms that this privacy question must be addressed independently of who owns the government’s copy of the data. 

Impact of Chatrie v. United States
On June 29, 2026—nine days before the district court entered the Revised Final Judgment—the Supreme Court decided Chatrie v. United States (No. 25-112). The Court held that law enforcement’s acquisition of comprehensive cell-phone location history data constitutes a Fourth Amendment search because individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such records, even when obtained for a limited time from a third-party company.

The decision reaffirmed that “property rights are not the sole measure” of Fourth Amendment protection and that governmental dominion over comprehensive, re-identifiable, intimately personal information implicates privacy interests society is prepared to recognize as reasonable. The Court expressed concern over the government possessing a “virtual panopticon” with which to scrutinize citizens’ activities and held that intermediate anonymization does not defeat the search when the government controls the process that ends in re-identification.

Plaintiffs argue that Chatrie directly undermines the Sixth Circuit’s property-only legal gateway. The State’s indefinite retention of children’s genetic data—with the exclusive re-identification key and statutory authority for secondary uses—presents an even stronger case for Fourth Amendment protection than the limited-duration location data at issue in Chatrie. The privacy theory was fully tried and decided in Plaintiffs’ favor by the district court on the existing record.

The case, Kanuszewski v. Hertel (No. 18-cv-10472), has been pending since 2018 and involves multiple Michigan children and their parents. It challenges the constitutionality of Michigan’s newborn screening retention and permissionless secondary-use practices of spots and genetic data. Plaintiffs are represented by attorney Philip L. Ellison of Outside Legal Counsel PLC in Hemlock, Michigan.

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