A Hawaii Supreme Court justice used a 91-page criminal case ruling to deliver an extraordinary eight-page denunciation of the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts, accusing the conservative majority of racism, democratic backsliding, and constitutional betrayal, and declaring that Hawaii's courts will refuse to follow its lead.
Justice Todd Eddins, a Democratic appointee who has served on the Hawaii high court since 2020, authored the majority opinion in State v. Granillo, a case involving a man convicted in 1990 of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman on Maui. The court ordered a new trial after concluding that hair and fiber evidence presented by an FBI expert at the original trial relied on forensic science that has since been discredited.
That narrow forensic question could have been resolved in a fraction of the opinion's length. Instead, Eddins devoted roughly eight pages to a political manifesto against the Roberts Court, one that legal observers on both sides of the aisle have called unprecedented in its tone and scope.
The opinion reads less like a legal ruling and more like a progressive fundraising letter. Eddins compared the current Supreme Court's jurisprudence to two of the most reviled decisions in American legal history. As Fox News Digital reported, the justice wrote:
"The Court that now defines federal due process does not honor the work of 1954. It revives the work of 1857. The work of 1896."
Those dates are not subtle. Eddins was comparing the Roberts Court to the Supreme Court that decided Dred Scott v. Sandford, which denied citizenship to Black Americans, and Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld racial segregation. He contrasted those with Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 landmark that ended segregated schools.
The accusation went further. Eddins wrote that "the Roberts Court sees only white" and "refuses to acknowledge who the Equal Protection Clause was written to protect." He called the Court's originalist justices "hubristic" and accused them of overriding Congress and the will of the people "to serve its own ends."
The opinion cited a litany of decisions that have drawn progressive ire: Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned the federal constitutional right to abortion; Citizens United v. FEC, on campaign finance; Rucho v. Common Cause, on partisan gerrymandering; Trump v. United States, on presidential immunity; and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which expanded Second Amendment protections.
Eddins framed the Hawaii Constitution as a bulwark against all of it, writing:
"When six justices walk away from those they are supposed to protect, state constitutions hold the line. That is not defiance. That is the design."
That line, "that is not defiance", may be the most revealing sentence in the entire opinion. It is, of course, precisely defiance. Eddins simply wants to dress it up in constitutional clothing.
The timing of the opinion is hard to ignore. Just weeks before Eddins issued his ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Hawaii's so-called "vampire rule" in Wolford v. Lopez, a 6-3 decision holding that the state could not require gun owners to obtain a property owner's permission before carrying a firearm into businesses and other private property open to the public. That ruling was a direct rebuke to Hawaii's efforts to restrict concealed-carry rights beyond what the Second Amendment permits.
The Hawaii Supreme Court has clashed with the federal high court on gun rights before. As National Review documented, the state court once invoked "the spirit of Aloha" as a basis for interpreting constitutional rights differently, a theory Justice Samuel Alito explicitly rejected in Wolford, writing that "the Second Amendment has the same meaning in all parts of the United States."
Eddins' opinion in Granillo appears to be the Hawaii court's answer to that rebuke. Unable to win at the Supreme Court on the merits, the justice chose to delegitimize the institution itself.
The reaction from legal professionals was swift and pointed. Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan posted on X:
"The Court issues an unhinged attack on the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. I haven't ever seen something like this. And it's not good."
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, a frequent commentator on judicial overreach from both sides, was equally direct. Turley wrote on X that the Hawaii Supreme Court "just issued a truly shocking opinion that unleashed a torrent of rage and recrimination against the majority of the United States Supreme Court, including suggesting that they are de facto racists." He described the opinion as "devoid of judicial restraint and decorum."
Neither characterization is unfair. When a state supreme court justice accuses the nation's highest court of "reviving" the legal reasoning of Dred Scott, that is not legal analysis. It is a political accusation of the most inflammatory kind, embedded in a document that carries the force of law.
States have always had the authority to interpret their own constitutions more broadly than the federal Constitution. That principle is well established, and it is not controversial. A state court can grant more rights under its own charter than the U.S. Supreme Court requires under the federal one.
But that is not what Eddins did. He did not simply apply Hawaii's constitution independently. He used a criminal case, one involving a woman who was kidnapped and sexually assaulted, as a vehicle to launch a political broadside against six justices he disagrees with. He accused them, in an official court opinion, of being racists who trample human dignity.
Chief Justice Roberts has argued publicly that the Supreme Court is not a political body. Eddins' opinion is a case study in what happens when a state court justice decides that it is, and acts accordingly.
Consider the opinion's own language. Eddins wrote that "a court that systematically dismantles democratic safeguards, steamrolls constitutional liberties, and tramples human dignity does not chart the course for the Hawaiʻi Constitution." Strip away the rhetoric and the message is plain: when the Hawaii Supreme Court disagrees with the U.S. Supreme Court's interpretation of constitutional rights, it will simply refuse to engage with the reasoning.
That is not federalism. It is nullification dressed in a judicial robe.
Justice Eddins was appointed to the Hawaii Supreme Court in 2020 by former Democratic Gov. David Ige. He has now used his position to produce an opinion that reads as though it were drafted for a progressive legal conference rather than a courtroom.
The Granillo defendant, convicted more than three decades ago of a violent crime against a woman on Maui, deserved a straightforward ruling on whether discredited forensic evidence warranted a new trial. What he got instead was a 91-page document in which his case served as a pretext for a political essay.
The victim, whose identity has not been publicly disclosed, deserved better too. Her case became a footnote in a justice's ideological project.
The pattern of escalation between Hawaii's judiciary and the federal Supreme Court, particularly on Second Amendment questions, raises a serious question about institutional discipline. When a state court openly declares that the nation's highest court has no authority to guide its interpretation of due process, the legal system's coherence depends on whether other state courts follow suit.
Several questions linger. It is unclear whether the majority opinion was unanimous or whether other justices joined only the forensic-evidence holding while declining to sign onto the eight-page critique. The U.S. Supreme Court and Chief Justice Roberts have not publicly responded. And the precise relationship between the Wolford v. Lopez ruling and Eddins' opinion, whether the former directly prompted the latter, remains a matter of inference rather than confirmed fact.
What is clear is the trajectory. A state supreme court justice has now compared the sitting U.S. Supreme Court to the courts that upheld slavery and segregation. He has accused the conservative majority of seeing "only white." And he has declared, in an official ruling, that Hawaii's constitution "takes no instruction" from the Roberts Court.
Progressive frustration with the current Supreme Court is nothing new. Dissenting justices on the left have expressed it in increasingly sharp terms. But there is a difference between a dissent and a declaration of independence. Eddins crossed that line.
When judges decide they answer only to the constitutions they prefer, the rule of law does not get stronger. It fractures, one opinion at a time.
