Rice v. Cayetano
The Supreme Court struck down Hawaii's rule limiting who could vote for trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to people descended from Hawaii's pre-1778 inhabitants, ruling that the ancestry test was really a race-based voting qualification.
Because the Fifteenth Amendment bars denying the right to vote based on race, the Court held Hawaii could not use ancestry as a stand-in for race to decide who gets to vote in a statewide election, even for a specialized state agency.
“The State's electoral restriction enacts a race-based voting qualification.”
The Court's core conclusion that Hawaii's ancestry-based voter test was really about race.
How it got here: A federal trial court and the Ninth Circuit both upheld Hawaii's voting restriction; Rice asked the Supreme Court to review and it agreed to hear the case.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Hawaii's Constitution created the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA), a state agency managing land trust funds for the benefit of "native Hawaiians" and the broader class of "Hawaiians." Only people who could trace ancestry to Hawaii's inhabitants in 1778 could vote for OHA's trustees. Harold Rice, a Hawaii citizen without that ancestry, was denied the right to vote in OHA trustee elections and sued the Governor, arguing the ancestry requirement was really a racial voting qualification barred by the Constitution.
The question before the Court
Could Hawaii limit voting for trustees of a state agency to people who could trace their ancestry to Hawaii's inhabitants before 1778?
Why it matters
The ruling opened OHA trustee elections to all Hawaii residents regardless of ancestry, changing how the agency's leadership is chosen. It also signals that states cannot use ancestry-based voter qualifications to sidestep the Fifteenth Amendment, affecting how other jurisdictions might structure elections tied to indigenous or ethnic programs.
What changes now
The case is a final merits decision, not a temporary order. The Ninth Circuit's judgment upholding the voting restriction is reversed, meaning Hawaii could no longer limit OHA trustee voting to people with the specified ancestry. The decision does not address whether the OHA programs or trust structure themselves are constitutional, leaving those questions for future litigation.
What this does not decide
The Court expressly assumed, without deciding, that OHA's underlying trust structure and programs benefiting native Hawaiians are lawful. The ruling addresses only the voting qualification for OHA trustees, not the constitutionality of OHA itself or of federal and state programs benefiting native Hawaiians generally.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Breyer
Justice Breyer agreed with the outcome but rejected the majority's broad reasoning that OHA's status as a state agency alone doomed the analogy to Indian tribal trusts. He argued instead that Hawaii's scheme failed because there is no genuine trust limited to native Hawaiians and because the OHA electorate, which includes people with only one ancestor from 1778, is far too broad to resemble any actual tribal membership definition.
Dissent — Justice Stevens
“There would be nothing demeaning in a law that established a trust to manage Monticello and provided that the descendants of Thomas Jefferson should elect the trustees.”Stevens's argument that ancestry-based voting for trust beneficiaries need not be about race.
Justice Stevens argued that Congress has long exercised plenary power over indigenous peoples, including native Hawaiians, and delegated a trust relationship to the State that justified OHA and its ancestry-based voting rule. He contended the classification was political rather than racial, akin to Mancari's tribal preference, and that the voting scheme was rationally tied to fulfilling the federal trust obligation to native Hawaiians.
Dissent — Justice Ginsburg
Justice Ginsburg dissented separately, relying on Part II of Justice Stevens's dissent, emphasizing that Congress's power to form special trust relationships with indigenous peoples is not limited to tribal Indians and extends to native Hawaiians, making the OHA voting scheme valid under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the Fifteenth Amendment, which flatly bars the government from denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, and treated this ban as fundamental and self-executing.
- The Court examined whether Hawaii's ancestry-based voter qualification was really a racial classification in disguise, noting that ancestry can serve as a proxy for race even when a law does not mention race by name.
- Because the definitions of 'Hawaiian' and 'native Hawaiian' were drawn from a historically and culturally distinct group tied to a common lineage, and because the statute's drafters admitted that 'peoples' was substituted for 'races' only as a cosmetic change with the same meaning, the Court concluded the ancestry test functioned as a race-based qualification.
- The Court rejected Hawaii's argument that the voting scheme could be justified by analogy to Congress's power to grant special treatment to Indian tribes under Morton v. Mancari, reasoning that OHA trustee elections were elections of the State itself, not the internal affairs of a separate tribal sovereign, so the tribal-preference rationale did not apply.
- The Court also rejected Hawaii's arguments based on special-purpose-district voting cases and on trust-beneficiary alignment, concluding that neither excused compliance with the Fifteenth Amendment's flat ban on race-based voting rules.
- Having found the ancestry requirement was a race-based voting qualification with no valid justification, the Court concluded it violated the Fifteenth Amendment.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Morton v. Mancari (417 U.S. 535)
The Court said this ruling on tribal hiring preferences does not extend to letting a state limit voting by ancestry.
Reaffirms Gomillion v. Lightfoot (364 U.S. 339)
The Court relied on this case to affirm that the Fifteenth Amendment overrides state authority over political boundaries.