Hawaii Supreme Ct Lashes Out At SCOTUS in CRT-Infused Rant, Citing KBJ Dissent

“The Roberts Court sees only white.”

by William A. Jacobson, Legal Insurrection, Saturday, July 18, 2026

The Hawaii Supreme Court (HSC), in an opinion written by Associate Justice Todd W. Eddins, just issued a ruling in a criminal case that is breathtaking not for the actual ruling, but for a multi-page attack on the U.S. Supreme Court that had nothing to do with the issue in the criminal case. It was just an opportunity to unload a pile of CRT-infused venom, hinting at future defiance of SCOTUS.

And not surprisingly, the HSC cited to a vituperative dissent by Ketanji Brown Jackson in the recent SCOTUS Louisiana redistricting case. I discuss KBJ’s dissents in “KBJ has become the equivalent of a hand grenade that Joe Biden threw into the Supreme Court”

I’ve asserted that one of the reasons KBJ writes her dissents – often alone without Sotomayor or Kagan joining – is that she is creating a body of “KBJ law” that other judges can cite to defy SCOTUS. As I said after the SCOTUS affirmative action ruling, if you want to see how Critical Race Theory eventually will enter the law, read KBJ’s dissent in that case.

You think I’m exaggerating about the HSC opinion? Nope, I’ve understated how insane it was.

The case itself and merits ruling was unremarkable. The issue was whether to reopen a criminal conviction when the underlying science (hair fiber analysis) behind the conviction had fallen into disrepute. I don’t practice criminal law so I have no real opinion on the court’s ruling that the case could be reopened – doesn’t seem outlandish to me.

But that’s were the HSC reasonableness stopped. Starting at page 72, after the court addressed the actual issue before it, the HSC went on an 8-page rant (pages 72-90), including the following excerpts (emphasis added):

We interpret the Hawaii Hawaii Hawaii Constitution on its own terms. The United State Supreme Court’s construction of the federal Due Process Clause does not define the protections of our state’s due process clause….

The Court that now defines federal due process does not honor the work of 1954. It revives the work of 1857. The work of 1896….

Today’s hubristic originalists use the same method to control modern life….

The Court overrides what Congress passed. It overrides what the people chose. All to serve its own ends.

What this Court has done to constitutional rights, democratic institutions, and the rule of law explains why Hawaii’s Constitution takes no instruction from it….

We take no guidance on the meaning of due process from a court that gutted due process protections in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org., 597 U.S. 215 (2022)….

The Supreme Court’s imperious ideology does not stop at due process. The same jurisprudence has cratered democracy itself.  Start with the Voting Rights Act.

The Roberts Court did what Congress never would. It rewrote the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a cornerstone of American civil rights, democratically enacted and repeatedly reauthorized…. Pretend law for a real statute.

The Court then ditched its own thirty-two day default for releasing decisions and hustled out its judgment mid-primary, a favor granted over objection only twice in twenty-five years. Callais v. Louisiana, 608 U.S. __ , 146 S. Ct. 1111, 1113 (May 4, 2026) (Jackson, J., dissenting).

The Roberts Court sees only white. It refuses to acknowledge who the Equal Protection Clause was written to protect. The freed people, their descendants, and all others denied equal citizenship. U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. It turns its back on what is in plain sight. The Fourteenth Amendment is not colorblind. It never was.

The Court calls the Constitution colorblind while engineering the dilution of Black votes, the unraveling of hard-fought civil rights remedies, and the erasure of Black history. That is not blindness. That is white sight, by design….

A Constitution interpreted this way is not colorblind. It is whatever the Court needs it to be. A way to advance its partisan project…. [Derides additional SCOTUS rulings.]

Rulings run in one direction, time after time. Weakening protections for those with less power. Fortifying those with more. The pattern speaks for itself. A court that systematically dismantles democratic safeguards, steamrolls constitutional liberties, and tramples human dignity does not chart the course for the Hawaii Hawaii Constitution.

Our constitutional system was designed for times like these.

Federalism is not a formality. It is the architecture. The framers built dual sovereignty into the structure of American government as an independent check against concentrated federal power. A Supreme Court driven by agenda and intent on swiping power that belongs to the people is exactly what that check was built for.

When six justices walk away from those they are supposed to protect, state constitutions hold the line. That is not defiance. That is the design….

That’s not all life tenure and zero accountability have produced lately. But it’s enough.

Carrie Severino at National Review notes the absurdity of this “screed,” the history of HSC defiance, and suggests it may be AI drafted:

One would think that Hawaii’s continual pattern of rebuke by the Supreme Court would chasten the state’s high court a bit. Just last month, the Court struck down Hawaii’s so-called “vampire rule” in Wolford v. Lopez, holding 6–3 that the state’s law—which made it a crime to carry a firearm onto private property open to the public absent the owner’s express, affirmative consent—violates the Second Amendment. Justice Alito’s opinion for the Court made clear that “the Second Amendment has the same meaning in all parts of the United States” and “cannot give way to ‘the spirit of Aloha’ in Hawaii . . . any more than it can yield to the spirit of the Big Apple (Bruen) or the Windy City (McDonald).”

Hawaii teed that memorable line up for Justice Alito. Two years ago, in State v. Wilson, the Hawaii Supreme Court—in an opinion by the same justice who authored the diatribe discussed below—announced that “[t]he spirit of Aloha clashes with a federally-mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons,” and that Hawaii would read the Second Amendment “differently than the current United States Supreme Court.” When Wilson reached Washington, Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Alito, issued a statement respecting the denial of certiorari noting that the Hawaii Supreme Court had simply “ignored” Bruen.

But instead of finally taking the hint after Wolford, Hawaii’s high court has gone on the offensive….

Pages 72 through 80 are worth reading in full, if only to marvel at the scope and arrogance of the digression, spanning voting rights, campaign finance, abortion, religious liberty, the Second Amendment, the major questions doctrine, Chevron deference, the spending power, the removal power, and birthright citizenship….

One final aside, given recent scrutiny of lawyers’ usage of AI tools in court filings. Curiously, the Hawaii high court’s opinion is littered with negative parallelisms, a common hallmark of AI-generated text. Just a few examples:

• “The harm happens at conviction, not discovery.”
• “This was not class association. It was source attribution.”
• “That is not what a neutral expert does. That’s what an advocate does.”
• “What matters is whether the trial was fair. Not whether the prosecutor knew it wasn’t.”
• “The constitutional injury is not prosecutorial bad faith. It’s the use of false evidence to convict.”
• “Good faith describes the lawyers. It does not describe the defendant’s plight.”
• “The Fourteenth Amendment is not colorblind. It never was.”
• “That is not blindness. That is white sight, by design.”
• “A Constitution interpreted this way is not colorblind. It is whatever the Court needs it to be.”
• “Federalism is not a formality. It is the architecture.”
• “The focus is not on what remains in the State’s case. It is on what the false evidence may have done to the verdict.”
• “That’s not a defect. That’s the protection at work.”
• “Materiality is not automatic reversal. . . . The standard is no rubber stamp.”

“The opinion by Justice Todd W. Eddins is devoid of judicial restraint and decorum. The fact that other justices would join in such an unhinged screed is a disgrace to the court and the Hawaii bar.”  — Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) July 18, 2026

“The Hawai’i Supreme Court’s diatribe, in fact, reads like one of KBJ’s solo dissents: emotionally partisan, lacking professionalism, and openly dismissive of the Constitution.”  https://t.co/1X7GwXXufp pic.twitter.com/EGMb8Gwvyp — RNLA (@TheRepLawyer) July 18, 2026 (@TheRepLawyer) July 18, 2026

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