(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) The Hawaii Supreme Court issued an insubordinate rant in a recent legal opinion that accused the U.S. Supreme Court of being racist and seemed to assert a special dispensation to ignore the law of the land.
“A court that systematically dismantles democratic safeguards, steamrolls constitutional liberties, and tramples human dignity does not chart the course for the Hawaiʻi Constitution,” said the opinion, authored by Justice Todd Eddins.
Eddins, a Caucasian born in Kentucky, was appointed to a 10-year term on the Hawaiian court by Democrat Gov. David Ige in 2020.
Despite having no claim to Hawaii’s native heritage, he boldly threw down the race card against conservative jurists like U.S. Justice Clarence Thomas, who is black.
“The Roberts Court sees only white,” Eddins claimed.
“It refuses to acknowledge who the Equal Protection Clause was written to protect,” he added. “The freed people, their descendants, and all others denied equal citizenship.”
The opinion in question stemmed from an appeal in the case of Daniel R. Granillo, who was convicted in 1990 of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman at a Maui shopping center.
The court called for a new trial, saying that scientific developments had rendered the forensic evidence used to convict Granillo invalid.
But the ruling itself went off the rails with Eddins’s acknowledgement that the decision relied on Hawaiian precedent while ignoring that of the federal courts.
For eight pages in the 91-page screed, Eddins attacked the high court for a multitude of opinions that he and his bench-mates seemed to disagree with, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade, allowing corporate spending on campaigns via Citizens United, landmark rulings on gun rights and presidential immunity, and the recent overturn of parts of the Civil Rights-era Voting Rights Act via Louisiana v. Callais.
“The Court calls the Constitution colorblind while engineering the dilution of Black votes, the unraveling of hard-fought civil rights remedies, and the erasure of Black history,” Eddins wrote. “That is not blindness. That is white sight, by design.”
Louisiana’s lawyers argued in the landmark case released earlier this year that states subject to federal oversight under the VRA should be free to make their own redistricting decisions without having to factor race into the mix.
By carving out special Democrat-dominated districts, they effectively undermined rather than aided the advancement of civil rights in places like Memphis, Tenn., where Steve Cohen — a white, Jewish Democrat — had defeated Charlotte Bergmann — a black Republican woman — in five past election cycles.
Constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley slammed the Hawaiian court ruling as “an appalling departure from judicial restraint and decorum.”
The Hawaii Supreme Court just issued a disgraceful attack on the United States Supreme Court that paints the majority as enemies of constitutional rights as well as presumptive racists. https://t.co/S7GrFkyl5X It is an appalling departure from judicial restraint and decorum…
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) July 17, 2026
However, it is not the first time the Hawaiian court has caused scandal for its defiant streak.
In a 2024 ruling, it flagrantly ignored Second Amendment gun rights by attempting to ban individuals from carrying firearms in public.
“The spirit of Aloha clashes with a federally-mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons during day-to-day activities,” said the ruling, also authored by Eddins.
The “Spirit of Aloha” does not give any court the ability to override our constitutional #2A rights.
This is absolutely disgraceful. https://t.co/3fhYh4NyIE
— Joni Ernst (@SenJoniErnst) February 8, 2024
Stunningly, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the case of Wilson v. Hawaii, but the court’s two most conservative justices, Thomas and Samuel Alito, issued a decision that declined to take up the case before the full court, thereby leaving the Hawaii court’s ruling intact.
Ben Sellers is a freelance writer and former editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
