New Jersey must ask parents before keeping a baby’s blood
A federal judge dismissed the parents’ challenge, but New Jersey lawmakers can still require consent before the state keeps newborn blood after screening.
Erica Jedynak announced the ruling while she awaits the birth of her second child1.
Their attorney, Robert Frommer of the Institute for Justice, a Virginia-based nonprofit public interest law firm, said the parents disagree and will respond. State attorneys argued that retaining blood spots allows follow-up testing and the development and validation of tests for new diseases. A court that cannot find a parent's interest in a baby's own blood has left the family with nothing to stand on, so who does the blood belong to?
New Jersey stores blood after screening
Every year about 100,000 New Jersey babies go through the state's mandatory newborn screening2. The parents' fight is over the leftover blood. The state kept such spots for 23 years without telling parents they were stored or how they might be used. Frommer says hospitals never got voluntary informed consent from parents, for the draw or for keeping the blood3.
Only the parents' lawsuit forced a change. Attorney General Matt Platkin issued a directive in June 2024 shortening retention, restricting how spots could be used, and requiring clearer communication with parents. The state now keeps unused samples two years for healthy babies and 10 years for newborns who test positive for disease2. Castner's ruling reports that over 60% of the older stored spots have been destroyed since November. The parents want a policy under which parents would have to agree to spot storage, rather than one that mandates retention3. A family that has to sue before the state shortens its hold on a newborn's blood does not control that blood.
Police used newborn blood in investigations
In 2022 the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender learned that state police had gotten a newborn's blood spot without a warrant and used it to charge the child's father with a crime. A Superior Court judge ordered the state to release records in January 2023, and they showed four police departments used blood spots in five cases2. If the blood was drawn to screen a baby for disease, why was a detective holding it?
The state's new limits on how blood spots could be used did not bar their use by law enforcement3. Erica Jedynak has said what any parent would: she does not like the idea that her child's genetic information could reach private third parties, law enforcement, or another government agency2. A newborn's DNA should not sit in a state file waiting for the next investigation.
Future testing does not replace consent
That rationale still does not explain why the state may keep a child’s blood without parental consent. Frommer says that once a baby has been tested for disease, the state has no further justification to hold on to the blood3.
Castner agreed that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees parents' right to the care, custody, and control of their children. Then she ruled that keeping the blood is not a "medical choice" and declined to extend that right to it. Frommer calls it "bizarre" to conclude that people lack a possessory interest in their own blood. His logic follows from the parental right the judge herself acknowledged: if parents direct their children's medical care, the state must ask permission before taking their blood3.
Trenton can require parental consent
Castner pointed to Trenton herself, saying such issues are better suited for public debate and legislative action. She cited legislation stalled in Trenton that would limit law enforcement's use of DNA samples taken from newborns and crime victims. The Legislature should take that up and go further: require informed parental consent before any storage, make retention opt-in, and destroy samples after screening unless parents agree otherwise. That is what the parents sought: voluntary, informed consent before any blood draws and destruction of all blood spots immediately after disease screening3.
Will Trenton write that consent rule into law before the next heel prick, yes or no?
Sources
- @EricaJedynak on X, 2026-10-31: A federal judge dismissed our lawsuit challenging the scary policy that @NJGov keeps newborn baby blood, years after the health screening, to do whatever they want without parental consent. This is all while we await the birth of our second child in the comi, 2026-10-31
- Parents renew challenge of NJ's practice of storing baby blood spots • New Jersey Monitor
- Judge rules against parents seeking to end New Jersey's storage of baby blood • New Jersey Monitor
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