Lawsuit seeks to strike down blood quantum rule for Hawaiian homestead leases

A conservative law firm has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the blood-quantum requirement that determines eligibility for Native Hawaiian homestead leases, opening a legal battle over a program central to Hawaiian land rights and cultural survival.

The Pacific Legal Foundation filed the suit June 1 in the U.S. District Court in Honolulu on behalf of Eric Ryan, a Honolulu resident who is not Native Hawaiian. Ryan’s attempt to enter the program ended at the pre-qualification stage, where the 50% blood quantum threshold screened him out. The suit alleges that the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the 5th Amendment.

The plaintiff leads the right-wing Hawaii Republican Assembly and was expelled from the party in May 2018. “In the middle of a housing crisis, the government should be expanding opportunity — not denying it based on ancestry,” said Caleb Trotter, a senior attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation, as per the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

Congress enacted the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act in 1921 after Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole, then a Hawaiian delegate to the U.S. Congress, pushed to set aside land for Native Hawaiians described as “landless and dying” following the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. The program covers roughly 200,000 acres, with eligible residents able to lease land for $1 a year under 99-year leases, and about 29,000 people on the waitlist.

The 50% blood quantum threshold was itself a compromise. Major landowners lobbied for a higher eligibility bar, while Kūhiō’s original proposal carried no blood quantum requirement.

The suit is part of a broader campaign against Native Hawaiian programs, following suits against Kamehameha Schools’ admissions preferences and a health scholarship for Native Hawaiian medical students. The Trump administration has also proposed eliminating Department of Hawaiian Home Lands funding in its fiscal year 2027 budget, reflecting its position that Native Hawaiians constitute a racial group rather than a federally recognized tribal nation.

Robin Puanani Danner of the Sovereign Council of Hawaiian Homestead Associations rejected that framing, saying the blood quantum classification was a colonial imposition and that the Hawaiian community’s standing is political, not merely racial. “Like American Indians and Alaska Natives, we are political bodies with a trust relationship with the federal government,” she told AP News.

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green and Atty. Gen. Anne Lopez have pledged to fight the suit, with Lopez naming Solicitor General Kalikoʻonālani Fernandes to lead the state’s legal defense.