The lawyers for the boy who is challenging Kamehameha Schools' Hawaiians-only admission policy filed another court motion yesterday to force Kamehameha to admit the non-Hawaiian 12th-grader before classes start next week.

Eric Grant, the Sacramento, Calif., attorney who represents the student known only as "John Doe," requested that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals transfer the boy's case back to U.S. District Court in Honolulu immediately so he can ask Judge Alan Kay to compel Kamehameha officials to accept the student.
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An expected Kamehameha appeal will put that decision on hold, meaning the boy, who is entering his last year of high school, would not be allowed to attend the school this month.

...acknowledge the request is rarely filed, and it'll be up to the appeals court to decide whether 'exceptional circumstances' warrant a departure from the way appellate cases are usually handled.

Kamehameha Schools officials said they will oppose the request, and some members of the legal community said it's not likely the court will grant the motion.

...because the ruling cited a civil rights statute that prohibits discrimination based on race, the school may be able to adopt an admissions policy based on "political classification." That might satisfy the court's concerns and still draw mainly Native Hawaiians.

One possibility: Restrict enrollment to descendants of citizens of the Kingdom of Hawai'i, he said. Up until the overthrow of the kingdom in 1893, most citizens here were Native Hawaiians, so such a policy would limit enrollment mostly to people of Hawaiian ancestry...

It's easy to sympathize with Hawaiian resistance to any change in the longstanding admittance policy, since enrollment of even a single non-Hawaiian student means a deserving Hawaiian child is denied a Kamehameha education.

But as a practical matter, this position may no longer be legally defensible.

It leaves Hawaiians to decide if they'll devise their own solution that protects Kamehameha's historic mission while passing legal muster — or have a solution imposed on them by unsympathetic outsiders.

They are up against adversaries who don't play nice in their mean-spirited drive to separate Hawaiians from their few remaining assets.

These antagonists twist civil rights laws, skew history, distort polls, hire Mainland guns to speak for them on issues that are uniquely local, and drum up legal cases that can yield fees of up to six figures for lawyers leading the movement.

Their dubious mantra of "aloha for all" tells all we need to know about how little they understand Hawai'i and the concept that aloha is something to be given, not taken.

Against such opposition, a Hawaiian strategy of marches, petitions and vague threats of "drastic action" is unlikely to prevail.

Hawaiians must become as creative as the other side in using the law to their advantage.

Importantly, the federal appeals court did not order that all races be admitted equally to Kamehameha Schools, just that race not be the overriding consideration in admissions.

This leaves the door wide open for a Plan B basing admissions on culture and other non-racial factors that satisfy the courts while still allowing for very few admissions of non-Hawaiian students.

In devising a fallback plan, Kamehameha trustees must abandon their compulsive secrecy and involve the Hawaiian community in the process.

Hopefully, Kamehameha Schools will win on appeal and there will be no need for a Plan B, but if there is, better it be settled in advance with some semblance of buy-in among Hawaiians rather than fought out at a crisis point with tears and rancor.