Kamehameha School Controversy Bubbles Up Again; Dueling Suits Filed

[WSJ_law_blog]

As a youngster, when we used to attend Minnesota Gopher hockey games on a semi-regular basis, we always took pride in the then-coach, Doug Woog, who according to legend only recruited in-state players. Since Minnesota high school hockey is clearly superior, Coach Woog’s policy simply made good sense.



This admittedly tangential anecdote came to mind today while reading Scotus blog’s update on the long-running controversy over the admissions policy of Hawaii’s exclusive Kamehameha Schools to admit only native Hawaiians. The school, Hawaii’s largest private landowner, was founded 120 years ago on the instructions of the will of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop (pictured). The school is financed by her estate’s $6.2 billion trust, the mission of which is to educate and “improve the capability and well-being of people of Hawaiian ancestry.” (As the LB noted in a past post, the former Bishop estate was one of the largest outside shareholders of Goldman Sachs before divesting its stake in 2002.)

An earlier Kamehameha case, testing whether an 1866 civil rights law still bars the use of race in private school admissions, reached the Supreme Court last year, via the Ninth Circuit, but was settled before the Justices took final action on it. Now, notes Scotus blog, a new suit, raising the same challenge, has been filed in U.S. District Court in Hawaii, but with new individuals suing.

Also, the Schools — there are three — filed a suit in Hawaii state court, claiming a violation of the 2007 settlement agreement because one of the attorneys involved had disclosed the confidential terms of the deal — including, the attorney said, a payment of $7 million to the youth who had sued — to the Honolulu Advertiser.

The new civil rights suit is a Section 1981 claim. In Runyon v. McCrary, notes Scotusblog, the Supreme Court ruled that Section 1981 prohibits private, commercially operated, non-religious schools from denying admission to prospective students who were black. The four plaintiffs in the new suit contend that they’ve been denied admission to the Kamehameha Schools because they are not of Hawaiian ancestry.