" Today the Court concludes that Hawaii's method of electing the trustees of OHA violates the Fifteenth Amendment. In reaching that conclusion, the Court has assumed that the programs administered by OHA are valid. That assumption is surely correct. In my judgment, however, the reasons supporting the legitimacy of OHA and its programs in general undermine the basis for the Court's decision holding its trustee election provision invalid. The OHA election provision violates neither the Fourteenth Amendment nor the Fifteenth."
Justice Ginsburg , dissenting.
"I dissent essentially for the reasons stated by Justice Stevens in Part II of his dissenting opinion. Ante , at 3-12 (relying on established federal authority over Native Americans). Congress' prerogative to enter into special trust relationships with indigenous peoples, Morton v. Mancari, 417 U. S. 535 (1974), as Justice Stevens cogently explains, is not confined to tribal Indians. In particular, it encompasses native Hawaiians, whom Congress has in numerous statutes reasonably treated as qualifying for the special status long recognized for other once-sovereign indigenous peoples. See ante , at 7, and n. 9 ( Stevens, J. , dissenting). That federal trust responsibility, both the Court and Justice Stevens recognize, has been delegated by Congress to the State of Hawaii. Both the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and the voting scheme here at issue are "tied rationally to the fulfillment" of that obligation. See Mancari, 417 U. S., at 555 . No more is needed to demonstrate the validity of the Office and the voting provision under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments."
Comments
https://turtletalk.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/93-us-amicus-brief.pdf
Well, ...... this is just the case that Justices Stevens and Ginsburg made back in 2000 !
Just change the name from The Office of Hawaiian Affairs to ...
............................................. The Office of Hawaiian Tribal Affairs.
But a Federal administrative rule concerning reorganization of a
Native Hawaiian government would need to determine who can participate
in the reorganization, including who would be eligible to assist in
drafting a constitution or other governing document, and who would be
eligible to vote in a ratification referendum. In discussing that
issue, commenters may wish to consider observations made by members of
the Supreme Court in Rice v. Cayetano, which invalidated a voting law
of the State of Hawaii under the Fifteenth Amendment. Rice, 528 U.S. at
518-22. Concurring in the judgment, Justice Breyer, joined by Justice
Souter, concluded that the voting qualification was impermissible
because the state statute ``defines the electorate in a way that is not
analogous to membership in an Indian tribe.'' Id. at 526. Justice
[[Page 35301]]
Breyer contrasted the state law's ``broad'' definition of
``Hawaiian''--which he noted would ``includ[e] anyone with one ancestor
who lived in Hawaii prior to 1778, thereby including individuals who
are less than one five-hundredth original Hawaiian (assuming nine
generations between 1778 and the present)''--with membership
definitions for various tribes in the continental United States, which,
for example, focus on whether individuals and their parents are
``regarded as Native'' by a Native village or group to which they claim
membership, or whether individuals have ``an ancestor whose name
appeared on a tribal roll . . . in the far less distant past [such as
1906, 1936, 1937, or 1968, rather than 1778].'' Id. at 526-27
(citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2014-06-20/html/2014-14430.htm