Rice V. Cayetano - Opinion of The Court

Opinion of The Court

The Supreme Court sided with the Petitioner. In a 7-2 decision based entirely on the 15th Amendment, they reversed the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, with Justices Stevens and Ginsburg dissenting. Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion for the Court, which was joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, and Justices O'Connor, Scalia and Thomas. They note that the 15th Amendment is certainly not bound by the language or circumstances surrounding its enactment, and that it is "quite sufficient to invalidate a scheme which did not mention race but instead used ancestry in an attempt to confine and restrict the voting franchise" (16). After all, "ancestry can be a proxy for race. It is that proxy here" (18). The structure of the OHA elections is "neither subtle nor indirect. It is specific in granting the vote to persons of defined ancestry and to no others" (17). The Respondent's argument that "descendants ... of aboriginal peoples" does not mean the same thing as "descendants ... of the races" is "undermined by its express racial purpose and by its actual effects" (20). As for Morton v. Mancari, were Hawaii's voting restrictions to be sustained under that authority, "we would be required to accept some beginning premises not yet established in our case law" (22). Essentially, the Court agreed with the Petitioner that native Hawaiians enjoy no tribal status. Not that it would make a difference: "Even were we to take the substantial step of finding authority in Congress, delegated to the State, to treat Hawaiians or native Hawaiians as tribes, Congress may not authorize a State to create a voting scheme of this sort" — that is, one that uses race as an eligibility requirement (22). The 15th Amendment is absolute even under such conditions, for the election of OHA trustees is still a State election, to which the Amendment clearly applies. Nor is the restriction based on beneficiary status rather than race, for "although the bulk of the funds for which OHA is responsible appears to be earmarked for the benefit of 'native Hawaiians', the State permits both 'native Hawaiians' and 'Hawaiians' to vote" — that is, both those who qualify with a 50% blood quantum and those who qualify as descendants of residents in 1778 — and " classification thus appears to create, not eliminate, a differential alignment between the identity of OHA trustees and what the State calls beneficiaries" (27). Yet, again, such details are irrelevant to the Court, for "Hawaii's argument fails on more essential grounds ... the demeaning premise that citizens of a particular race are somehow more qualified than others to vote on certain matters. That reasoning attacks the central meaning of the Fifteenth Amendment" (27). The Court's opinion ends with a brief lecture to the State of Hawaii, concluding with the observation that Hawaii must "seek the political consensus that begins with a sense of shared purpose. One of the necessary beginning points is this principle: The Constitution of the United States, too, has become the heritage of all the citizens of Hawaii" (28).