A Hawaii Supreme Court justice used a 91-page criminal case opinion to launch an extended political attack on the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative majority, declaring that Hawaii's constitution "takes no instruction" from the Roberts Court and comparing its current jurisprudence to the reasoning behind two of the most reviled decisions in American legal history.
Justice Todd Eddins, appointed in 2020 by then-Democratic Gov. David Ige, 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 FBI hair and fiber evidence relied on forensic science that has since been discredited.
That legal question could have been resolved in far fewer pages. Instead, Eddins devoted roughly eight pages of the opinion to a sweeping denunciation of the Roberts Court, its originalist methodology, and its decisions on abortion, campaign finance, gun rights, gerrymandering, and presidential immunity. The result reads less like a judicial ruling than a progressive manifesto dressed in a court filing's clothes.
The most incendiary passage in the opinion draws a direct line from the current Court's work to two of the darkest chapters in American constitutional law. Fox News Digital reported that Eddins 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."
The references are unmistakable. The year 1954 is Brown v. Board of Education, which ended racial segregation in public schools. The year 1857 is Dred Scott v. Sandford, which denied citizenship to Black Americans. And 1896 is Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld racial segregation under the "separate but equal" doctrine.
In other words, a sitting state supreme court justice compared six colleagues on the nation's highest bench to the authors of Dred Scott and Plessy. That is not a legal argument. It is an accusation of moral equivalence with justices who endorsed slavery and Jim Crow.
Eddins also wrote that "the Roberts Court sees only white" and "refuses to acknowledge who the Equal Protection Clause was written to protect", a charge that the Court's rejection of race-conscious policies amounts to racial indifference or worse.
The opinion catalogued a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions that Eddins characterized as damaging to rights and democratic governance. Among the cases cited: 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 tied these together with language that would be more at home in a Democratic campaign speech than a court opinion. He wrote:
"The Court overrides what Congress passed. It overrides what the people chose. All to serve its own ends. What this Court has done to constitutional rights, democratic institutions, and the rule of law explains why Hawaiʻi's Constitution takes no instruction from it."
He called the Court's originalists "hubristic" and argued that they "use the same method to control modern life." He described a court that "systematically dismantles democratic safeguards, steamrolls constitutional liberties, and tramples human dignity."
And then the kicker, framed as a statement of constitutional design rather than defiance:
"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."
It may not be defiance by Eddins's definition. But when a state court justice announces that his court will disregard the interpretive framework of the nation's highest court, and does so in language that questions the legitimacy and good faith of that court, the practical difference is thin.
The opinion drew swift criticism from legal figures who said it crossed a line from state constitutional interpretation into open institutional hostility.
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 was equally blunt, also posting on X:
"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."
Turley described the opinion as lacking judicial restraint and decorum, a characterization that is difficult to dispute given the text itself.
Lost beneath the political broadside is an actual criminal case with an actual victim. In 1990, a man identified in court records as Granillo was convicted of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman on Maui. The Hawaii Supreme Court overturned that conviction and ordered a new trial, concluding that the FBI expert's hair and fiber evidence relied on forensic methodology that has since been discredited.
That is a legitimate legal question. Forensic science standards have evolved, and courts across the country have grappled with how to handle convictions that rested on now-questioned techniques. The Hawaii Supreme Court had every right, and arguably a duty, to address it.
But Eddins chose to use a case involving a violent crime against a woman as a vehicle for an eight-page political essay. The victim on Maui deserved a court focused on the facts of her case, not one using her ordeal as a platform to air grievances about Citizens United and Dobbs.
The timing of the opinion matters. Just weeks before Eddins issued his ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court handed Hawaii a significant defeat in Wolford v. Lopez, striking down the state's so-called "vampire rule" by a 6-3 margin. That rule had required gun owners to obtain a property owner's permission before carrying a firearm into businesses and other private property open to the public.
The decision was a direct application of the Court's expanded Second Amendment framework under Bruen, one of the very decisions Eddins attacked in his opinion. Whether the Wolford loss motivated the tone of the Granillo opinion is a matter of inference, not established fact. But the proximity is hard to ignore.
Eddins framed his argument as an exercise in state constitutionalism, the well-established principle that state constitutions can provide broader protections than the federal Constitution. That principle is real and has a long pedigree on both the left and right. Conservative states have invoked their own constitutions to protect property rights and gun rights beyond federal minimums.
But there is a difference between a state court interpreting its own constitution independently and a state court justice using a criminal opinion to publicly delegitimize the U.S. Supreme Court, accuse its majority of racism, and compare its work to Dred Scott. The former is federalism. The latter is something else entirely.
The opinion does not merely assert that Hawaii's constitution offers stronger protections in specific areas. It argues that the Roberts Court has forfeited its moral authority and that Hawaii's judiciary should treat it accordingly. That is not a legal holding. It is a political declaration issued from a bench.
And it raises an obvious question that the opinion itself does not answer: If Hawaii's courts will not look to the U.S. Supreme Court when interpreting constitutional protections, where does that principle stop? Does it apply only to issues where progressives disagree with the Roberts Court? Or does it extend to any area where a state justice finds the federal majority insufficiently enlightened?
Justice Eddins holds a lifetime appointment on a state bench. He faces no voters. He answers to no electorate. He used the authority of his position to issue what amounts to a political manifesto, one that will be cited by every progressive activist and state attorney general looking for permission to treat U.S. Supreme Court precedent as optional.
The opinion is 91 pages long. Roughly eight of those pages have nothing to do with the case before the court. They exist because Eddins wanted them to exist, and because no institutional check prevented him from inserting them.
That is the deeper problem. When judges use opinions as op-ed pages, the public's trust in courts as neutral arbiters erodes, not because of what the Roberts Court did or didn't do, but because a justice in Honolulu decided his political views belonged in a ruling about forensic evidence from 1990.
Courts that lecture the public about the rule of law might start by practicing it themselves.
