Adam Kanuszewski, et al. v. Sandip Shah, et al.

Article III confines federal courts to live cases or controversies. When claims become moot on appeal, this Court has long required vacatur—not a merits decision. United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U.S. 36 (1950). The Sixth Circuit defied that rule. The departure clashes with Article III. The decision below also approves a regime allowing state officials and their partners to indefinitely retain and exploit the genetic and medical data of nearly every newborn without informed consent in perhaps the largest compulsory genetic database ever assembled. That holding cannot be reconciled with this Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence recognizing profound privacy interests in such data. The questions presented are:

1. Whether a court of appeals may issue binding merits precedent on constitutional claims after those claims have become moot during appeal as a result of the government’s compliance with a permanent injunction, contrary to Article III and United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U.S. 36 (1950).

2. Whether the Fourth Amendment permits a State, without informed parental consent, to indefinitely retain and use newborns’ highly-private genetic and medical data after the screening for which the samples were involuntarily compelled has concluded.