Cite as: 528 U. S. 495 (2000)
Stevens, J., dissenting
ficiaries of the public trust created by the State and administered by OHA, and they have at least one ancestor who was a resident of Hawaii in 1778. A trust whose terms provide that the trustees shall be elected by a class including beneficiaries is hardly a novel concept. See 2 A. Scott & W. Fratcher, Law of Trusts § 108.3 (4th ed. 1987). The Committee that drafted the voting qualification explained that the trustees here should be elected by the beneficiaries because "people to whom assets belong should have control over them . . . . The election of the board will enhance representative governance and decision-making accountability and, as a result, strengthen the fiduciary relationship between the board member, as trustee, and the native Hawaiian, as beneficiary." 13 The described purpose of this aspect of the classification thus exists wholly apart from race. It is directly focused on promoting both the delegated federal mandate, and the terms of the State's own trustee responsibilities.
The majority makes much of the fact that the OHA trust— which it assumes is legitimate—should be read as principally intended to benefit the smaller class of "native Hawaiians," who are defined as at least one-half descended from a native islander circa 1778, Haw. Rev. Stat. § 10-2 (1993), not the larger class of "Hawaiians," which includes "any descendant" of those aboriginal people who lived in Hawaii in 1778 and "which peoples thereafter have continued to reside in Hawaii," ibid. See ante, at 523. It is, after all, the majority notes, the larger class of Hawaiians that enjoys the suffrage right in OHA elections. There is therefore a mismatch in interest alignment between the trust beneficiaries and the trustee electors, the majority contends, and it thus cannot be said that the class of qualified voters here is defined solely by beneficiary status.
13 1 Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of Hawaii of 1978, Standing Committee Rep. No. 59, p. 644.
541
Page: Index Previous 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007