This School Has Taught Native Hawaiians Since 1887. Is That Discrimination?

The Kamehameha Schools, established with a bequest from a Hawaiian princess in 1887, is among the most elite private educational institutions in Hawaii. Its central mission, to serve Native Hawaiians, stayed 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.

Now, Students for Fair Admissions, the group that successfully sued to end affirmative action in college admissions, has declared Kamehameha a new target. On Monday, it filed a lawsuit in a U.S. court in Honolulu to challenge Kamehameha’s admissions policy. The complaint argues that the institution’s policy violates a federal civil rights law prohibiting discrimination in contracts — in this case, admission contracts at a private school.

If successful, the lawsuit could overhaul the schools’ identity and mission — and possibly further fuel future challenges against racially conscious programs across the country.

In a telephone interview before the lawsuit was filed, Edward Blum, the president of Students for Fair Admissions, said that his group supported Kamehameha’s mission to provide an education steeped in Hawaiian language, culture and stewardship.

But, he said, that education “should be imparted to all Hawaiians and not just those with a specific genetic background.”

Kamehameha said it was prepared for the challenge. “We are resolved to vigorously defend our admissions policy,” it said in a statement on Monday. “The facts and the law are on our side, and we are confident that we will prevail.”

Many Native Hawaiians see Kamehameha’s admissions policies quite differently from Mr. Blum — not as a racial issue, but as a matter of history and sovereignty.

The lawsuit, they say, is a frontal assault on the princess’s bequest and yet another attempt by outsiders to snatch away resources devoted to uplift the Hawaiian people.

And they point out, the school, with a $15 billion endowment that is 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 Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge at the University of Hawaii and a Kamehameha alumnus.

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. Any successful move could embolden conservative activists to challenge other private race-based programs, like employee affinity groups, as well as federal remedial programs like those targeting Native Americans.

“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, Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, 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 businessmen 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.

In the complaint, Students for Fair Admissions argues that Kamehameha’s admissions policy still does not constitute a valid remedial plan because it has no logical end point and that the school has not demonstrated that the admissions policy leads to improved outcomes for Native Hawaiians.

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 one in five high school applicants. More than 60 percent of its students receive financial aid or come from “orphaned or indigent circumstances,” according to the school.

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 I.R.S. review found that in 1998, 78 percent of the students were part Caucasian, 74 percent were part Chinese, 28 percent were part Japanese, and 23 percent 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 that 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 Mr. 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 J.R.O.T.C. (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 spokesman for Kamehameha, reiterated the school’s preferential policy.

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 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.

The lawsuit could take years to wind its way through the courts, and still not reach the Supreme Court.

If it does, Kamehameha’s admissions policy may be in trouble, some legal scholars say. John Tehranian, a law professor at Southwestern Law School, grew up in Hawaii and has written about constitutional issues related to the schools.

“If it’s under the currently composed court,” he said, “I think they’re going to have an uphill battle.”