With a new lawsuit against Kamehameha Schools, many Native Hawaiians see the challenge to its admissions policies as a matter of history and sovereignty.
Established with a bequest from a Hawaiian princess in 1887, Kamehameha is among the most elite private educational institutions in Hawaii. Its central mission—to serve Native Hawaiians—has remained intact for decades. That vision has long been realized through its admissions policy. While anyone can apply to attend Kamehameha’s elementary, middle, and high schools, preference is given to students who can prove some Hawaiian ancestry. As a result, almost all students attending Kamehameha are Native Hawaiians.
Students for Fair Admissions, the group that successfully sued to end affirmative action in college admissions, last month filed a lawsuit in federal court arguing that the admissions policy violates a federal civil rights law prohibiting discrimination in contracts— in this case, admission contracts at a private school.
Kamehameha said it was prepared for the challenge. “We are resolved to vigorously defend our admissions policy,” the school said in a statement after the suit was filed. “The facts and the law are on our side, and we are confident that we will prevail.”
The lawsuit, they say, is a frontal assault on the bequest of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop and yet another attempt by outsiders to snatch away resources devoted to uplifting the Hawaiian people. They also point out that the school, with a $15 billion endowment larger than some Ivy League universities, takes no federal funding.
“It’s not a question of denial of opportunities; it’s a question of sovereignty over our own resources,” said Jon Osorio, dean of the Hawai‘inui‘kea School of Hawaiian Knowledge at the University of Hawaii and a Kamehameha alumnus.
Kamehameha is so distinct in its history, admissions policy, and funding structure that any court decision invalidating its policy is unlikely to directly affect other schools, some legal experts say. But the challenge reflects a broader shift in much of the country’s view of racial minorities, especially as the Trump administration tries to choke off immigration and dismantle diversity programs across public life.
“We are in the midst of what I would regard as an era of racial revanchism,” said Justin Driver, a law professor at Yale University and the author of “The Fall of Affirmative Action.”
Kamehameha’s founder, Pauahi, was the last direct descendant of Kamehameha I, the 18th-century king who unified the Hawaiian Islands. When she died in 1884, her will bequeathed some 375,000 acres to establish the schools. At the time, Hawaii was an independent kingdom, but diseases from the West were devastating its population.
A few years later, the monarchy was overthrown by Western businesspeople, and for generations onward, Hawaiian culture and language were actively suppressed. Today, Native Hawaiians still face significant health, economic, and educational disparities. Many have moved to the mainland because of soaring living costs.
Census data released in 2024 showed that for the first time, more Native Hawaiians were living outside Hawaii than in the state.
Concerns about a lawsuit had been growing in Hawaii since Students for Fair Admissions started a website before filing the lawsuit, seeking plaintiffs to challenge Kamehameha’s admissions policy. A petition had gathered more than 30,000 signatures. Politicians, including some of the state’s Republican lawmakers, had also criticized the group.
“At the college level, we agree with what they’re going after,” Brenton Awa, a Republican state senator, said in an interview before the lawsuit was filed. “But we’re talking about a princess’s will, and this will was set up to restore something that had been taken away from Native Hawaiians.”
Even among Native Hawaiians, admission to Kamehameha is competitive. The school, with 5,400 students across its campuses on Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island, accepts only 1 in 5 high school applicants. More than 60% of its students receive financial aid or come from “orphaned or indigent circumstances,” according to the school.
Michelle Kamali‘i-Ligsay, the daughter of a retail store manager and a public school aide, attended the Oahu school in the late 1990s. She received opportunities, scholarships, and alumni networks unavailable at her public school. But more importantly, she said, by the time she graduated, she was nearly fluent in Hawaiian — a rare accomplishment at a time when Hawaiian language classes were not widely available.
Now the principal of Kamehameha’s elementary program on Maui, she personally believes these benefits should be preserved for her people.
“Giving other people those opportunities,” she said, “is going to lessen that opportunity” for Native Hawaiians.
Applicants claiming Native Hawaiian status must undergo a rigorous verification process to prove their ancestry. Even so, Kamehameha’s student body — like Hawaii more broadly — is remarkably racially diverse. While the school does not release official demographic figures, an IRS review found that in 1998, 78% of the students were part Caucasian; 74% were part Chinese; 28% were part Japanese; and 23% were of other ancestries, including African American, Arab, Brazilian, Indian, Native Alaskan, and Native American.
What binds students together is their Hawaiian ancestry, however distant.
Eassie Miller, 43, who identifies as Hawaiian but also has Japanese, Filipino, English, German, and Spanish ancestry, still remembers the day he learned he was accepted to Kamehameha as the best moment in his life.
“Knowing that Princess Pauahi Bishop set up this trust and had this vision in mind for her people, you just wanted to be there as a Hawaiian kid,” said Miller, who now works in construction management on Maui.
Kamehameha had tried to inoculate itself from legal challenges. In the early 2000s, it severed all remaining ties to federally supported programs like JROTC. (Concerns remain that Kamehameha could lose its tax-exempt status, which happened to Bob Jones University in the 1970s because of its ban on interracial dating.)
It also enrolled at least a few non-Native Hawaiian students despite protests. It is unclear, though, whether non-Native Hawaiians are regularly accepted. When asked to clarify, Sterling Wong, a spokesperson for Kamehameha, reiterated the school’s preferential policy.
In its complaint, Students for Fair Admissions said it represented two anonymous non-Native Hawaiian families in Hawaii—Family A and Family B—who say they would apply to Kamehameha if the school did not restrict admission.
Before the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning affirmative action, lower courts had upheld Kamehameha’s admissions policy.
In 2006, a federal appeals court ruled that Kamehameha could maintain its preferential policy because of what it said were unique factors, including the history of Hawaii, the plight of Native Hawaiians, and the schools’ distinctively remedial mission.
Lawyers for Kamehameha had also argued that Native Hawaiians, as an Indigenous people with a political relationship with the U.S. government similar to Native Americans, constituted a political classification, not just a racial one.
In the complaint, Students for Fair Admissions argues that Kamehameha’s policy is not a valid remedial plan because it does not try to remedy a specific instance of past illegal discrimination. The group also argues that the policy is unconstitutional because Kamehameha has not suggested a logical end point, nor has it demonstrated a direct link between its racial preference and improved educational outcomes for Native Hawaiians as a whole.
The lawsuit could take years to wind its way through the courts and still not reach the Supreme Court.
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