Hawaii’s Top Court Unleashes ‘Unserious Screed’ Against Conservative-Majority Supreme Court

The Hawaii Supreme Court used eight pages in a ruling released Wednesday to take umbrage with major decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States.

The high court ruled in Wolford v. Lopez, released on June 25, that Hawaii’s law requiring private property owners who wished to allow concealed carry on the premises to clearly post signs that carrying guns was allowed was unconstitutional because it violated the Second Amendment. In its ruling in Granillo v. Hawaii, a case involving claims of a wrongful conviction, the Hawaii court attacked Supreme Court decisions while implying the justices were supporting the reasoning behind the 1857 Dred Scott decision.

“We interpret the Hawaiʻi Constitution on its own terms. The United State Supreme Court’s construction of the federal Due Process Clause does not define the protections of our state’s due process clause. This court ‘reason[s] independently, untethered from the Supreme Court’s analysis of the United States Constitution,’” the opinion states. “The Court that now defines federal due process does not honor the work of 1954. It revives the work of 1857 [The year the Dred Scott Case was decided]. The work of 1896 [the year Plessy V. Ferguson was decided]. The Constitution must be interpreted ‘according to its true intent and meaning when it was adopted.’”

“It is an appalling departure from judicial restraint and decorum,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Lines such as ‘The Roberts Court sees only white’ would make an MSNBC commentator blush. This is nothing more than an unserious screed rather than a reasoned opinion.”