Civil Contempt Motion filed against Na'i Aupuni

[Justin]

Basically, the gist of the motion is that by certifying that everyone who was up for election is free to come to the February convention, Na'i Aupuni and the OHA have violated both the letter and the spirit of the injunction from three weeks back. The argument, in a nutshell, is that if people were restricted from running because of their race, having every candidate come to the convention rather than just the winners is no less prejudicial to those non-Hawaiians who could not run or vote in the election. Here's a link to the Supreme Court brief:

http://new.grassrootinstitute.org/wp-con...2-2015.pdf

I can't help but notice the dichotomy between this issue and the TMT debacle. In the TMT debacle, the protestors claimed that they needed to act when they did, because if they didn't and construction started, it would be too late after the fact, and that everyone should wait for the Hawaii Supreme Court to issue its ruling. And in this (specific) regard, I agree.

So I find it interesting that in this case, the Na'i Aupuni are facing a civil contempt motion for pushing ahead in the face of a Temporary Injunction from the US Supreme Court forbidding the race-based election and convention from going forward. Basically, the moving party here is making nearly the same policy-based arguments the protestors made against TMT.

I realize there is not 100% overlap between the protestors and Na'i Aupuni (and perhaps far from it), but to the extent anyone supports the TMT protestors and also pushing ahead with the Na'i Aupuni convention, I'd be interested to hear what the difference is and why the Na'i Aupuni folks can't wait until the legal process works itself out.