Harold F. Rice v. Benjamin J. Cayetano, Governor of Hawaii (528 U.S. 495)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided February 23, 2000 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 528 U.S. 495 · 120 S. Ct. 1044
- Decided
- February 23, 2000
- Term
- October Term 1999
- Vote
- 7–2
- Majority author
- Justice Kennedy
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
- Constitutional ruling
- State/territorial law held unconstitutional
Opinion excerpt
Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court. A citizen of Hawaii comes before us claiming that an explicit, raee-based voting qualification has barred him from voting in a statewide election. The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, binding on the National Government, the States, and their political subdivisions, controls the ease. The Hawaiian Constitution limits the right to vote for nine trustees chosen in a statewide election. The trustees compose the governing authority of a state agency known as the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, or OHA. Haw. Const., Art. XII, § 5. The agency administers programs designed for the benefit of two subclasses of the Hawaiian citizenry. The smaller class comprises those designated as “native Hawaiians,” defined by statute, with certain supplementary language later set out in fall, as descendants of not less than one-half part of the races inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands prior to 1778. Haw. Rev. Stat. §10-2 (1998). The second, larger class of persons benefited by OHA programs is “Hawaiians,” defined to be, with refinements contained in the statute we later quote, those persons who are descendants of people inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands in 1778. Ibid. The right to vote for trustees is limited to “Hawaiians,” the second, larger class of persons, which of course includes the smaller class of “native Hawaiians.”…
Excerpt of a 50,690-character opinion. The full text and citation network load in the interactive viewer above.