OHA case appeal rejected

A group challenging Hawaiian programs has limited legal status

A federal appeals court has refused to reconsider its ruling that limited the standing of a group of Hawaii taxpayers to challenge the funding of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands.

However, the decision Friday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals doesn't affect an earlier decision that kept alive a portion of the group's lawsuit seeking to stop state funding of OHA for allegedly discriminating against non-Hawaiians.

"It's not fatal, because the main part of our case is still intact. That is the claim that OHA violates the 14th Amendment," the group's attorney, H. William Burgess, said yesterday.

A call seeking comment from OHA officials wasn't immediately returned.

The San Francisco-based appeals court ruled in August that the multiethnic group of taxpayers challenging Hawaiians-only programs had standing to pursue its claim that funding native Hawaiian programs with state tax dollars violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

In the same ruling, however, the appeals court upheld the Hawaii federal court's dismissal from the lawsuit of a challenge to the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, which was created by an act of Congress in 1921.

The suit had contended that revenue from ceded lands -- crown land under the Hawaiian monarchy that became public land and eventually was handed over to the state with statehood in 1959 -- should benefit Hawaii's entire population, not just Native Hawaiians through Hawaiians-only programs.

But the appeals court refused to reconsider that issue last Friday.

The remaining portion of the lawsuit will now be sent back to the federal court in Hawaii, Burgess said.