Whether you like any of these entitlements or not, the Akaka Bill — or rather, legal challenges resulting from its passage — would jeopardize all of them. For example, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Rice v. Cayetano that the Hawaiians-only voting qualifications in OHA elections violated the Fifteenth Amendment — because Hawaiians were not an Indian tribe and thus do not warrant special treatment — trustees prudently settled the Kamehameha Schools lawsuit rather than allow their admissions policy to be struck down (and along with it the Bishop Estate’s tax-free status). And just last year the Supreme Court unanimously rebuked OHA’s political posturing in the ceded lands case.
Hawaii’s congressional delegation — including gubernatorial candidate Neil Abercrombie — seems not to have gotten the message, intending to push the Akaka Bill as soon as Congress finishes with health care. And President Obama has promised to sign it. Unfortunately, much as with health care, neither Congress nor the White House has taken constitutional concerns seriously. Put simply, the Akaka Bill violates the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments’ proscription on racially discriminatory state action.
Hawaii’s congressional delegation, meanwhile, continues to insist that there is enormous public support for the bill — even while refusing to survey this support or allow a referendum. And for good reason: a recent Zogby poll shows that 60% of those who have an opinion on the Akaka Bill oppose it and 76% oppose paying the higher taxes that would be necessary to pay for a separate Hawaiian nation-tribe.
Even if the Akaka Bill somehow passed a referendum, however, it is almost certain that the Supreme Court would ultimately declare it unconstitutional. Congress simply cannot create new sovereigns outside the constitutional framework, and analogies to American Indians misconstrue both the history and legal status of peoples who predate the United States.
That is, the Constitution’s Indian law exception arises from a unique compromise with pre-constitutional realities — “dependent nations” with a separate existence and long-standing self-government. Once the Constitution was ratified, no government organized under it could create another government that can exempt itself from the Bill of Rights. And the Supreme Court said in the 1913 case of United States v. Sandoval that Congress cannot create new Indian tribes.
Rice showed that one-drop rules and other race-based voting requirements are unconstitutional — in Hawaii as elsewhere. Moreover, the Court found Native Hawaiians to be an ethnic group, so Congress cannot pass a law giving them rights denied others. Indeed, racial preferences are contrary to the ongoing efforts to safeguard equality in an America that now has a biracial president who grew up in Hawaii.
Both Rice and the ceded lands case suggest that a race-based governing entity of the kind the Akaka Bill envisions simply does not pass constitutional muster. But forcing the Supreme Court to say so will have far-ranging implications, opening the door to successful challenges of all Hawaiians-only entitlement programs.
Hawaiians have to decide for themselves if this institutional instability is what they want. The Bishop Estate trustees found the challenge to their policies so threatening that they paid millions of dollars to prevent Supreme Court review.
Like the Bishop Estate trustees, all Hawaiians should now ask themselves whether they wish to endure the Pandora’s Box of litigation the Akaka Bill would open. If the answer is no, they should petition their congressional delegation to stop this legislation.
