HONOLULU (CN) - A Hawaii resident is suing the state's Hawaiian Home Lands program and the U.S. Department of the Interior, arguing that a blood-quantum requirement barring him from applying for a public homestead lease is government-sanctioned racial discrimination.

Eric Ryan filed the class action Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii against Kali Watson, chairman of the Hawaiian Homes Commission, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and the federal government. 

Ryan, a lifelong Hawaii resident, says he tried to apply for a Hawaiian Home Lands lease through the state's online pre-qualification form. When he answered "No" to the question asking whether he is at least 50% Native Hawaiian, he was told he did not meet the minimum requirements to apply for a DHHL lease.

The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, enacted by Congress in 1921, set aside roughly 200,000 acres of public land for homestead leases available exclusively to people who can prove descent from inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands prior to 1778. The program currently has more than 10,000 active leases, each for a 99-year term at $1 per year. The waiting list exceeds 30,000 applicants, with some having waited decades. 

The exclusion, Ryan argues, is categorical.

"It does not depend on income, need, hardship, residency, or contribution to the community," Ryan said in the complaint. "It turns solely on lineage."

His lawsuit targets both state and federal defendants because the blood-quantum requirement is not just a matter of state policy. When Hawaii was admitted to the Union in 1959, Congress required the state to adopt the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act and prohibited it from altering lessee qualifications without federal consent. Ryan said the arrangement makes enforcement of the requirement a joint federal-state system.

The secretary of the interior is charged with reviewing proposed amendments to the act and transmitting them to Congress with a recommendation. Congress has never repealed the blood-quantum requirement or lifted its restriction on Hawaii altering lessee qualifications, Ryan says in the complaint.

Ryan argues Hawaii lacks the unilateral authority to eliminate the requirement even if state officials wished to do so.

"The Constitution does not permit government - state or federal - to distribute public land according to bloodline," Ryan said.

Ryan brings two causes of action in his lawsuit. The first, against Watson in his official capacity, claims the blood-quantum requirement violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The second, against Burgum and the United States, claims the federal statutory condition preventing Hawaii from removing the requirement violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment's due process clause.

Ryan is represented by Kevin O'Grady of the Law Office of Kevin O'Grady in Honolulu and attorneys from the Pacific Legal Foundation, a Sacramento-based public interest law firm that frequently challenges race-conscious government programs.

"In the middle of a housing crisis, the government should be expanding opportunity, not denying it based on ancestry," Caleb Trotter, a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, said in a statement. "Homestead leases are a valuable public benefit, and the Constitution does not permit them to be distributed based on blood quantum."

Ryan's suit is filed as a class action on behalf of all Hawaii residents 18 or older who lack the required blood quantum and have tried to or are prepared to apply for a lease.

Watson and representatives for the Department of the Interior did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Source: Courthouse News Service