Hawaiian schools practised race discrimination

The New York Times reports the schools\' admissions policy requires prospective pupils to prove that at least one ancestor lived on the Hawaiian Islands in 1778, when the British explorer Captain James Cook arrived. The decision turned on the proper interpretation of a Reconstruction-era law, the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The law guarantees ‘the right to make and enforce contracts free from illegitimate and unlawful discrimination on the basis of race’. The schools conceded that their admissions policy was based on racial classifications. But they said the exclusion of non-Hawaiians was part of a lawful affirmative action plan. Judge Jay Bybee said those goals might be valid but only so long as they did not create an absolute bar to people of other races. Full report in The New York Times