The Kamehameha Schools lawsuit is a federal challenge filed in October 2025 by Students for Fair Admissions, the group behind the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against affirmative action, seeking to strike down the private school’s longstanding admissions preference for applicants of Native Hawaiian ancestry. The case is pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii, and as of mid-2026 the judge is weighing whether the plaintiffs even have standing to sue before any ruling on the merits.1Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Students for Fair Admissions v. Trustees of the Estate of Bernice Pauahi Bishop
What the Lawsuit Challenges
Kamehameha Schools is a private, privately funded institution that educates about 5,400 students in grades K through 12 across three campuses.2New York Times. Hawaii Kamehameha Schools Discrimination Lawsuit Its admissions policy states that it gives “preference to applicants of Hawaiian ancestry to the extent permitted by law.”3Kamehameha Schools. About Pauahi – Will
In practice, non-Native Hawaiian applicants are considered only after all qualified Native Hawaiian applicants have been placed. Because demand from Native Hawaiian families consistently exceeds the seats available, admission of students without any Hawaiian ancestry to K-12 campus programs is extremely rare.4Native American Rights Fund. Kamehameha Schools Admissions Data SFFA’s complaint characterizes this system not as a preference but as “a rigid, sequencing-based quota” that operates as an absolute bar.1Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Students for Fair Admissions v. Trustees of the Estate of Bernice Pauahi Bishop
Who Is Suing and on What Legal Theory
SFFA filed the case on October 20, 2025, against the Trustees of the Estate of Bernice Pauahi Bishop, as case number 1:25-cv-00450.5Courthouse News Service. Students for Fair Admissions v. Kamehameha Schools Complaint The organization is a nonprofit founded in 2013 by Edward Blum, whose earlier cases produced the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision striking down race-conscious admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.6PR Newswire. Students for Fair Admissions Sues Kamehameha Schools to End Race-Based Admissions Months before filing, SFFA launched a website inviting rejected families to share their experiences as potential evidence.
The complaint rests on a single statute: 42 U.S.C. § 1981, the post-Civil War law guaranteeing all persons equal rights in making and enforcing contracts regardless of race. SFFA argues that enrollment involves contracts, and that denying admission based on ancestry is therefore illegal discrimination in contracting.
The complaint’s central move is to argue that a 2006 Ninth Circuit ruling upholding the same policy — the Doe case — has been effectively overruled by the Supreme Court’s 2023 SFFA v. Harvard decision. In Doe, an 8-7 en banc Ninth Circuit majority declined to apply strict scrutiny and instead borrowed a burden-shifting framework from Title VII employment law, finding that the policy addressed a “manifest imbalance” in Native Hawaiian educational outcomes.7FindLaw. Kamehameha Schools Bernice Pauahi Bishop Estate v. Doe That case settled for $7 million in May 2007 before the Supreme Court could take it up, leaving the divided appellate ruling as controlling precedent.8Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Kamehameha Schools Settlement Details SFFA now argues that the reasoning underpinning Doe cannot survive Harvard.
SFFA also challenges the empirical basis for the preference, contending that the school has not updated its educational assessment report since 2021 and that gaps between Native Hawaiians and other groups have narrowed. And it adds a constitutional backstop: if § 1981 is read to permit a Native Hawaiian exception, that exception would itself violate the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee.5Courthouse News Service. Students for Fair Admissions v. Kamehameha Schools Complaint
How Kamehameha Schools Is Defending the Policy
Kamehameha Schools and CEO Jack Wong issued a joint statement with the Board of Trustees promising a “vigorous defense” and declaring: “We are confident that our policy aligns with established law, and we will prevail.”9Honolulu Civil Beat. Kamehameha Schools Admission Policies May Face Legal Challenge
The defense has several layers. First, the school is entirely privately funded and takes no federal money, which puts it outside the reach of Title VI and other statutes tied to federal funding.10KHON2. Virginia-Based Group Calls Kamehameha Schools Admission Policy Neither Fair Nor Legal
Second, and more consequential, federal law treats Native Hawaiians as having a political status comparable to American Indians and Alaska Natives. Congress has stated that it provides services to Native Hawaiians “not because of their race, but because of their unique status as the indigenous people of a once sovereign nation.”11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 20 U.S.C. § 7512 – Findings If the court accepts that framing, the admissions preference could be analyzed as a political classification rather than a racial one, potentially avoiding the strict scrutiny that doomed race-conscious admissions at Harvard. This is the same theory that has protected federal programs benefiting Native American tribes, and its applicability here could prove decisive.
Third, the school leans on Doe itself. That decision remains binding Ninth Circuit precedent unless and until a higher court says otherwise, and Kamehameha will argue it still controls. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs has publicly aligned with the school, framing the lawsuit as an “attack on the right of Native Hawaiians to care for our own, on our own terms.”10KHON2. Virginia-Based Group Calls Kamehameha Schools Admission Policy Neither Fair Nor Legal
The Anonymous Plaintiffs
The named plaintiffs are identified in court filings only by initials: B.P. (a mother), I.P. (her daughter, a minor who applied and was rejected in 2022), plus two households referred to as Family A and Family B, with E.S. later added as an additional plaintiff.12Hawaii Public Radio. Families Suing Kamehameha Schools Over Admissions Policy to Stay Anonymous for Now13Honolulu Civil Beat. Teens Suing Kamehameha Didn’t Have Scores to Get In, Lawyer Says
SFFA sought to keep those identities out of the public record, citing an unusual volume of threats. During a March 2026 hearing, SFFA attorney Cam Norris told the court that 125 death threats had been directed at SFFA’s attorneys and Blum.14News from the States. Family Suing Kamehameha Schools Can Stay Anonymous for Now Lead local counsel Jesse Franklin-Murdock said his home address was posted online and that he received a package containing what appeared to be feces, which he reported to the FBI.15U.S. News & World Report. Family Suing Kamehameha Schools Over Admissions Policy Are Getting Threats, Seek Anonymity Kamehameha’s attorney Joachim Cox called the threat allegations “conjecture” and argued the public has a “right to know who is attempting to employ the judicial system” against the school.16Hawaii News Now. Kamehameha Schools Lawsuit Plaintiffs Seek Anonymity Amid Death Threats
On April 7, 2026, Judge Micah W. J. Smith ruled that the plaintiffs could remain publicly anonymous for the time being. He wrote that the plaintiffs had “not made a strong showing” but that their fears were “reasonable, even if not by a wide margin,” and observed that there was no evidence the threats came from Kamehameha supporters specifically. The families must still disclose their identities to the school under seal, and the anonymity question may be revisited when the case enters discovery.14News from the States. Family Suing Kamehameha Schools Can Stay Anonymous for Now
Where the Case Stands Now
The case is before U.S. District Judge Micah W. J. Smith, a Biden appointee who took the bench in early 2024. Smith is a Harvard Law graduate who clerked for Justice David Souter and served as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and the District of Hawaii.17Federal Judicial Center. Smith, Micah William Janso
Kamehameha Schools signaled early that it would seek dismissal. At a January 26, 2026 status conference, Smith ordered the school to consolidate all its Rule 12(b) motions into a single filing and said he would first focus on constitutional and statutory standing.1Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Students for Fair Admissions v. Trustees of the Estate of Bernice Pauahi Bishop
Standing dominated a hearing on May 27, 2026. Cox argued that the individual plaintiffs E.S. and I.P. did not score high enough on the school’s initial race-neutral evaluation to have been considered for admission regardless of ancestry, and that Families A and B never actually applied.13Honolulu Civil Beat. Teens Suing Kamehameha Didn’t Have Scores to Get In, Lawyer Says Norris countered that applying to a school whose policy effectively bars non-Hawaiians is a futile exercise, and that forcing plaintiffs to prove individual qualification would trigger a discovery slog. He also told the court plainly that SFFA intends to take the case to the Supreme Court. Judge Smith took the matter under advisement.
Separately, on December 1, 2025, Smith certified SFFA’s Fifth Amendment challenge to the U.S. Attorney General, extending the government’s deadline to intervene by 60 days.1Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Students for Fair Admissions v. Trustees of the Estate of Bernice Pauahi Bishop
As of mid-2026, no ruling on the merits has issued, and the consolidated motion to dismiss remains pending.
Why This Case Is Not a Rerun of Harvard
The Supreme Court’s 2023 SFFA v. Harvard decision addressed public and federally funded universities under the Equal Protection Clause and Title VI.18Supreme Court of the United States. Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College It did not directly address a private institution that takes no federal money and is sued only under § 1981. Whether the reasoning of Harvard reaches a private charitable trust like the Bishop Estate is one of the central open questions this case will test.
Some post-Harvard decisions have pushed the ruling’s logic outward. A federal court granted a preliminary injunction under § 1981 against a nonprofit grant program that favored members of specific racial groups, and legal scholars have questioned whether the older distinction between “invidious” discrimination and permissible affirmative action by charities can survive.19Illinois Law Review. Is Racial Discrimination Ever Charitable Cutting the other way, Congress’s repeated recognition of Native Hawaiians as a political rather than racial group gives Kamehameha an argument no private university had in the Harvard case.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 20 U.S.C. § 7512 – Findings
That combination is what makes the Kamehameha Schools lawsuit consequential beyond Hawaii. If it reaches the Supreme Court, as SFFA has said it intends, the justices will confront a question the 2007 Doe settlement kept them from answering: whether a privately funded charitable trust can maintain an ancestry-based admissions preference, and if so, on what legal footing.