Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
Non-Hawaiians Lawyer: Rice ruling won't hit benefits By Christine Donnelly
will sue to
run for OHA
Lawyer John Goemans says
people want to run and a court
decision is needed to clear the way
Star BulletinThe lawyer who started the Rice vs. Cayetano case said several non-Hawaiians want to run for Office of Hawaiian Affairs trusteeships and he will sue on their behalf if they are rejected as candidates.
John W. Goemans refused to identify the prospective plaintiffs, but said he was willing to discuss his strategy in light of Gov. Ben Cayetano's comments last week that the state government may need a declaratory opinion from the state Supreme Court on who is eligible to run for OHA trustee.
"In regard to the racial qualification for the trusteeship, the governor is exactly right that the better part of prudence requires that the question be addressed now," Goemans said Tuesday. "There are people who want to run and it will require a court determination, one way or the other."
Goemans said his clients would submit nominating papers "sometime" prior to the Sept. 8 filing deadline and would sue if they are rejected as candidates. The next OHA election is Nov. 7.
The agency was created in 1978 to serve native Hawaiians, with trustees and the voters all required to be native Hawaiian. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the voting requirement as unconstitutional, but did not directly address the trustees' status.
Goemans said he believes the Rice ruling means that any other government program exclusively for native Hawaiians is an illegal racial preference and presumptively unconstitutional.
But Girard Lau, a deputy in the state Attorney General's office and Hawaii's lawyer of record in the Rice case, disagreed. "The law that requires the trustees to be Hawaiian is still in force and unchanged by the Rice decision. The ruling said everybody is allowed to vote, that's all. It didn't say anything about the trustees," Lau said. "That is the opinion of this office and we've said it publicly several times."
Clayton Hee, OHA chairman, called Goemans' legal strategy "disingenuous."
"It's a pre-emptive effort to cause further anxiety in the Hawaiian community... It seems to me that prudent people would allow the judiciary to complete its work," said Hee, referring to OHA and the state's agreement to seek clarification from the state Supreme Court on whether the current trustees can stay on the job. "Anything less would suggest opportunism, premeditation and personal agendas."
Goemans was the initial lawyer for Harold "Freddy" Rice, a Caucasian rancher from the Big Island rancher who sued over being prevented from voting in an OHA election. Rice has said he would not be a party to future lawsuits, but several other non-Hawaiian opponents of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement said they were considering running for OHA.
Retired attorney H. William Burgess said he might try to run as long as an OHA candidacy would not jeopardize a motion he and 22 other people filed Tuesday asking the Hawaii Supreme Court to declare the Office of Hawaiian Affairs itself unconstitutional. The motion also seeks to dismiss OHA's claim for more "ceded lands" revenues from the state.
"I'm thinking about it. I'm not a definite go yet, but I have time yet to decide," Burgess said.
Kenneth Conklin, also among those seeking to intervene in the "ceded lands" case, said he, too, was considering running. Conklin said he was dismayed that rather than seeking to comply with the high court ruling, OHA trustees and some state officials seemed bent on circumventing it.
Four OHA seats are up for re-election this year. State elections officials said they did not know of any non-Hawaiians taking out nominating papers.
OHA Special
Rice vs. Cayetano arguments
Rice vs. Cayetano decision
Holo I Mua: Sovereignty Roundtable
Native Hawaiian
lawyer downplays
Rice ruling
The decision was limited to voting
By Lori Tighe
only and likely doesn't threaten other
Hawaiian benefits, he says
Star-BulletinThe threat to use the Rice v. Cayetano decision to destroy other Hawaiian benefits has "very little chance" of succeeding, according to a former president of the Native Hawaiian Bar Association.
Bill Meheula, who is representing plaintiffs in a lawsuit to prevent the state from selling ceded lands pending sovereignty, said he thought the Rice decision was unfair, but it was limited to only the voting for Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustees.
"Any effort to extrapolate that other preferences for native Hawaiians would be struck down is not supported by the decision," he told a group of about 75 people at a public forum examining the decision at the University of Hawaii's Center for Hawaiian Studies.
Lawyer John Goemans has said he planned to use the Rice V. Cayetano decision to attack government programs for native Hawaiians.
"I don't think he would be successful," Meheula said.
The federal government has a long history of giving benefits to Indian tribes whether they are federally recognized or not, he said.
Dr. Kekuni Blaisdell, coordinator of Pakaukau, a coalition of pro-independence groups, said, "What's clear to Hawaiians is, 'Let's go form our own nation. They can't attack us there.' "
Blaisdell questioned Meheula's opinion of the Rice V. Cayetano decision as probably not invalidating Hawaiian benefits, because of the political agenda of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Meheula agreed that the Supreme Court justices could have found a way to uphold the OHA voting restriction as ruled by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
"I don't think the Supreme Court is favorably inclined to protect Hawaiian interests," he said. "The decision wasn't fair. It ignored reality, history and the logic of only Hawaiians voting for only Hawaiian trustees when the beneficiaries are only Hawaiian."
The state, however, underestimated the power of the 15th Amendment which upholds that a U.S. citizen's right to vote shall not be denied or abridged based on race, Meheula said.
"It's unyielding," he said.
Since OHA is a state agency, the U.S. justices ruled that it is "demeaning to conclude that non-Hawaiians are not qualified to vote for the leadership of the trust."
Meheula said the U.S. Supreme Court used the 15th Amendment as a way to express their conservative philosophies about indigenous people.
"The Supreme Court has a heavy agenda for not supporting Hawaiian sovereignty and we don't want to go back to this court," he said.
OHA Special
Rice vs. Cayetano arguments
Rice vs. Cayetano decision
Holo I Mua: Sovereignty Roundtable
