A Hawaii Supreme Court justice issued a sweeping critique of the nation’s highest court while overturning a decades-old criminal conviction this week.
Justice Todd Eddins authored the 91-page majority opinion in a case involving a man convicted in 1990 of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman on Maui.
The court ordered a new trial after determining that hair and fiber evidence presented by an FBI expert relied on forensic science that has since been discredited.
In roughly eight pages of the opinion, Eddins argued that Hawaii’s courts should not defer to the U.S. Supreme Court when interpreting the state constitution.
He wrote that when six justices abandon those they are meant to protect, state constitutions must hold the line, calling this not defiance but design.
Eddins contended that Hawaii’s Constitution provides stronger protections than the federal Constitution as currently interpreted by the nation’s highest court.
He accused the court of abandoning landmark civil rights principles established in the 1954 decision that ended school segregation.
Instead, he argued the court’s originalist approach revives the reasoning of the 1857 decision denying citizenship to Black Americans and the 1896 ruling that upheld racial segregation.
Eddins wrote that the court overrides congressional action and popular choice to serve its own ends, explaining why Hawaii’s Constitution takes no instruction from it.
He pointed to several consequential rulings as evidence that constitutional protections have eroded, including the decision overturning federal abortion rights and the expansion of presidential immunity.
He also cited campaign finance, partisan gerrymandering, and Second Amendment rulings as part of a pattern weakening individual rights.
Eddins accused the court of adopting a colorblind approach to equal protection that ignores the clause’s original purpose of shielding formerly enslaved Black Americans.
He wrote that a court systematically dismantling democratic safeguards and constitutional liberties does not chart the course for Hawaii’s Constitution.
Legal observers said it was highly unusual for a state supreme court opinion to devote substantial space to attacking the U.S. Supreme Court.
One law professor described the opinion as devoid of judicial restraint and decorum, while a state solicitor general called it an unhinged attack on legitimacy.
The opinion follows a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down Hawaii’s rule requiring gun owners to obtain permission before carrying firearms into certain private spaces.
Eddins has served on the Hawaii Supreme Court since 2020 after appointment by the state’s former governor.
