California's voter-approved law requiring police to take DNA samples from anyone arrested on a felony charge is constitutional because it intrudes only minimally on privacy while enhancing the state's ability to solve crimes and clear the innocent, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

DNA sampling is no more invasive than fingerprinting and provides an "extraordinarily effective tool for law enforcement," the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in a 2-1 ruling.

Dissenting Judge William Fletcher, however, said fingerprints contain less information than DNA and are used for a different reason - to identify suspects. He said DNA shouldn't be collected from suspects who have already been identified through fingerprints, and haven't been convicted yet, merely to try to connect them to other crimes.

The law, part of a 2004 ballot measure that took effect in 2009, requires police to swab an inner cheek of all felony arrestees for DNA and enter the information in a national database. The previous law required DNA samples from convicted felons.

Those who are not convicted of the new charges within three years can ask a judge to remove their genetic data, but prosecutors can veto that request.

The California Supreme Court is reviewing a separate challenge to the law. Michael Risher, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, said both cases are headed for the U.S. Supreme Court, along with a federal law allowing officers to take DNA samples from anyone arrested for any federal crime.

Thursday's ruling allows the government to "treat people who have not been convicted of anything, and are presumed innocent, as if they've been found guilty," said Risher, who argued against the DNA law. He said the state has no evidence that "taking (DNA) from people who are not convicted does anything to solve crime."

Attorney General Kamala Harris, whose office defended the law, called the ruling "a victory for public safety." She said DNA from felony arrestees "has assisted law enforcement in solving thousands of crimes."

In Thursday's ruling, Judge Milan Smith said DNA collection is "a minor inconvenience" that is "far less intrusive" than the police-supervised blood extraction from a suspected drunken driver that the Supreme Court approved in 1966.

He said opponents' "images of an oppressive Big Brother" were misplaced. A suspect's DNA profile contains only limited, essential information, the law makes it a crime to misuse the data and innocent suspects can get themselves removed from the database, the judge said.

Fletcher's dissent questioned the effectiveness of those safeguards and said DNA sampling "reveals information about familial relationships," which can be used to broaden police investigations of evidence found at crime scenes.

The ruling can be viewed at http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2012/02/23/10-15152.pdf.

This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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DNA samples of felony arrestees OK, court rules