Kamehameha Schools is facing a possible legal challenge over its admissions policy.
The Virginia-based nonprofit Students for Fair Admissions launched a website Thursday condemning Kamehameha Schools’ policy granting preference to Native Hawaiian students over any others.
“We believe that focus on ancestry, rather than merit or need, is neither fair nor legal, and we are committed to ending Kamehameha’s unlawful admissions policies in court,” reads the website.
While no court case has yet been filed, the message on the website urges parents whose children have been denied admission to Kamehameha Schools to share their stories.
Students for Fair Admissions has launched other campaigns against affirmative action policies at other schools. In particular, in 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court found that race-based admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were unconstitutional as a result of cases brought by the group's founder, Edward Blum.
Blum is a conservative activist with a lengthy career of lawsuits against various policies or procedures that, he argues, are unfairly preferential to minority or ethnic groups.
Kamehameha Schools issued a statement on the matter Thursday assuring that they are “confident that our policy aligns with established law, and we will prevail.”
“We anticipated that our nearly 140-year-old admissions policy, providing preference to Native Hawaiian children, would again be challenged,” the statement read. “…Our kula and operational leaders are prepared and committed to vigorously defending the vision of Ke Ali‘i Pauahi.”
The Office of Hawaiian Affairs Board of Trustees made its own statement, calling SFFA’s challenge “not only a direct affront to the will and legacy of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, but also an attack on the right of Native Hawaiians to care for our own, on our own terms.”
OHA’s statement noted that SFFA has no connection or commitment to Hawai‘i and that its challenge is not new, but represents one component of an escalating series of attacks against “the hard-won protections that enable our people to heal, rise and chart our future.”
In a 2003 lawsuit, Doe v. Kamehameha Schools, a U.S. District Court ruled in favor of the schools after an unnamed teenager — who was not Native Hawaiian — sought admission to Kamehameha Schools.
At the time, Kamehameha Schools defended its policy on the grounds that it is a privately funded school system and that it exists to correct ongoing imbalances facing Native Hawaiians, particularly an educational need recognized by the U.S. Congress.
But although the court found in 2006 that the admissions policy is valid and “designed to counteract the significant, current educational deficits of Native Hawaiian children in Hawai‘i,” Kamehameha Schools paid $7 million to the student a year later when the case was poised to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Aloha State Daily reached out to OHA, Kamehameha Schools and SFFA for comment.
