A Mainland-Funded Lawsuit Wants to Gut Hawaiian Home Lands

On Monday, Oahu resident Eric Sean Ryan, 60, filed a federal lawsuit seeking to invalidate the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, the 1921 law that set aside roughly 200,000 acres as a permanent homeland for Native Hawaiians. His co-counsel is the Pacific Legal Foundation, a Sacramento nonprofit that has spent decades fighting what it calls “government overreach.”

A mainland law firm has come to our pae ʻāina to argue that a promise made to a people once described in federal law as “landless and dying” is now the real injustice.

We reject that completely.

What is this lawsuit really asking for?

The suit claims the eligibility rule, proof of at least 50 percent Hawaiian ancestry, is unconstitutional racial discrimination. Ryan’s attorney says the government should be “expanding opportunity — not denying it based on ancestry.”

But the Act is not a giveaway. It is restitution, a federal acknowledgment that kānaka maoli were stripped of their ʻāina after their kingdom was overthrown, and that a sliver of it would be held in trust for their kūpuna, their keiki, and the generations to come. You cannot expand opportunity by dissolving the one promise made to the people who lost the most.

Who is bringing this fight?

Look closely at the man fronting it. Ryan, a founder of Hawaii Republican Action, was expelled from the Republican Party of Hawaii in 2018 by a 19-12 vote of its own committee. That year, a Honolulu judge granted then-Rep. Andria Tupola a three-year restraining order after she alleged his online attacks incited death threats against her. Six years earlier, former Rep. Kymberly Pine secured a restraining order against him as well, according to court records.

This is the record of the person asking a federal court to undo a century-old trust for Native Hawaiian ʻohana.

Two systems, one ʻāina.

When connected interests want something, the mainland money arrives, and the courthouse doors swing open. When a Native Hawaiian family waits years on the DHHL list for a homestead lease, they are told to be patient. One system moves fast for the powerful. The other tells kānaka maoli to wait for land that was theirs to begin with.

Attorney General Anne Lopez says the state has a “legal and moral obligation” to defend the program, with Solicitor General Kalikoonalani Fernandes leading the case. Good.

We expect nothing less.

Our kuleana now.

Every kamaʻāina who believes these promises still mean something has a role. Call your legislators.

Show up. Submit testimony.



The Act has stood since 1921. It survived statehood. It will survive a lawsuit funded from across the ocean — if we defend it.

The ʻāina remembers. The people are watching. And we are not going anywhere.