Equal Protection

Back to the Hawaiian-only election. Here’s an interview from ThinkTech Hawaii which asks “Is Nai Aupuni Sponsored by the State Government?

The interview is conducted by the plaintiff in the Akina v. Hawaii case, and the interviewees are one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, Michael Lilly, and the other is U.

An op-ed piece in today’s Star-Advertiser by Judge (Ret.) Walter Heen and U. Hawaii lawprof Randy Roth asks “What is OHA?

For those of you who don’t already know, “OHA” is the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, a governmental entity created by the 1978 amendments to the Hawaii Constitution. But what the acronym

Here’s the latest on the now-cancelled “Nai Aupuni” Hawaiians-only poll/election, described by one local commentator as having “the integrity of a Costco membership,” and by Election law maven Rick Hasen as the “Oprah” theory of elections after the organization cancelled the extended vote and invited all candidates to come to the convention once

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Today, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser published an op-ed by me, Col. David Brostrom (U.S. Army, retired), Rep. Mark Takai, who represents Hawaii’s First Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Andrew Walden, editor and publisher of Hawaii Free Press, about the case, argued this morning in the U.S. Supreme Court about who

The latest news in a fast-moving election law case, about the validity of a Hawaiians-only election to choose delegates to a constitutional convention about the issue of Hawaiian national sovereignty: this morning, Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy issued this order which temporarily puts a stop to the counting of the ballots. An extraordinary move, but one

The headline of this post is clickbait, of course, since the California Court of Appeal didn’t formally file an amicus brief in favor of the government in Property Reserve, Inc. v. Dep’t of Water Resources, No. S217738, a case now pending in the California Supreme Court. But the court’s opinion in Young’s Market Co.

Here’s a fascinating decision from the Ninth Circuit on our other area of interest, election law. 

Public Integrity Alliance, Inc. v. City of Tucson, No. 15-16142 (9th Cir. Nov. 10, 2015) was a challenge to Tucson’s unusual hybrid system of electing the city council. The primary election is a partisan primary, limited to residents

Who gets counted for reapportionment purposes?

Everyone!

Please forgive the deviation (a pun for our election law colleagues) from the blog’s usual land use and takings fare, but frequent readers understand that we also have an interest in election law, and occasionally post up items of interest.

Today we filed this amici brief in Evenwel v. Abbott

Here’s the latest in a case that we’ve been following, which was in both state and federal court, Bridge Aina Lea v. Land Use Comm’n

The litigation is a series of two lawsuits that originated in state court in the Third Circuit (Big Island), one an original jurisdiction civil rights lawsuit, the other