Supreme Court Rules 9-0 Against Hawaiians’ Land Claims

April 8, 2009 by Eric OKeefe

supreme_court Last week the nation’s highest court ruled that Native Hawaiians do not have a legal claim to state lands totaling more than 1.2 million acres. Native Hawaiians as well as the state’s Office of Hawaiian Affairs had asserted that a 1993 Congressional Apology Resolution by the federal government for the illegal overthrow of Hawaii’s monarchy in 1893 had recognized the “inherent sovereignty of the native Hawaiian people.”