Hawaii's Supreme Court once told America the Second Amendment doesn't apply there because of the "Spirit of Aloha."
Justice Todd Eddins just went further – and this time he put it in an official ruling the whole country has to follow.
What he wrote on page seventy two is now sitting on the desk of the nine justices he targeted.
AFPI Asks Supreme Court to Disbar Todd Eddins and Two Hawaii Justices Under Rule 8
The America First Policy Institute filed a letter with the clerk of the U.S. Supreme Court asking justices to consider disciplining three sitting Hawaii Supreme Court justices under Supreme Court Rule 8. The rule lets the Court suspend or disbar any member of its Bar for conduct unbecoming a lawyer.
The targets are Hawaii Chief Justice Vladimir Devens, Associate Justice Todd Eddins, and Associate Justice Sabrina McKenna. All three are listed as members of the U.S. Supreme Court Bar.
The case that triggered this fight is Granillo v. State, a July 15 ruling granting a new trial to Daniel Granillo, convicted in 1990 of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman on Maui. The Hawaii court found the FBI hair and fiber evidence used against him had since been discredited.
AFPI's letter says it has no problem with that part of the ruling. The problem is what came next.
Eddins Called the Roberts Court Racist on Page 72 of an Official Hawaii Opinion
Eddins wrote the majority opinion. Devens and McKenna joined it. Roughly eight of the ruling's ninety one pages have nothing to do with Daniel Granillo, his conviction, or Hawaii law.
Eddins used the space to attack the U.S. Supreme Court's recent rulings on abortion, voting rights, gerrymandering, campaign finance, religious liberty, presidential immunity, and gun rights – none of which had anything to do with the case in front of him.
"The Roberts Court sees only white," Eddins wrote, according to AFPI's letter.
"That is not blindness," the opinion continued. "That is white sight, by design."
Eddins told readers the Court's rulings amount to nothing more than "white noise" and accused six justices of "engineering the dilution of Black votes."
Federal Judge Was Admonished in 2020 for Saying Less in a Law Review Article
AFPI's chief legal affairs officer Leigh Ann O'Neill said any judge can criticize Supreme Court legal reasoning in the strongest terms available.
O'Neill drew a hard line between criticizing a ruling and what Eddins actually did.
"These three justices did something else," O'Neill said. "They used a precedential opinion of a state's highest court to accuse the justices of deliberate racism and partisan corruption, on matters that had nothing to do with the case in front of them, and invited the country to treat the Supreme Court's rulings as white noise."
O'Neill pointed to a 2020 precedent that has Eddins, Devens, and McKenna in serious trouble. Federal judge Lynn Adelman found that out the hard way — the 7th Circuit's Judicial Council formally admonished him for a law review article making the same charge against the Supreme Court.
A law review article. Not an official court ruling.
"A federal judicial council publicly admonished a sitting judge for making a version of these accusations in a law review article," O'Neill said. "The Granillo majority made them in the pages of published law, under the authority of judicial office."
The letter also cites Justice Neil Gorsuch's 2025 warning that lower court judges "are never free to defy" Supreme Court decisions.
Rule 8 gives the Supreme Court sole authority to act. There is no outside enforcement mechanism and no deadline attached to AFPI's letter.
A spokesperson for the Hawaii Supreme Court did not respond to a request for comment on the complaint.
National Review called the ruling a screed that broadcasts contempt for the very institution reviewing Hawaii's work. Even a Honolulu Star-Advertiser letter to the editor said the court was wrong to rock the boat.
Three sitting judges picked a fight with the nine people who can end their careers before the Supreme Court's Bar. Whether the Court answers that fight is now the only question left.
Analysis
Eddins didn't write a letter to a newspaper or publish a law review article — he embedded his attack on page 72 of a binding court opinion that every Hawaii judge must now follow.
Every legal system depends on lower courts following the ones above them, whether they like the rulings or not. Eddins didn't lose that argument through debate. He decided the rule doesn't apply to him and put that decision in the official record for the Supreme Court to read for itself.
The Adelman precedent shows the judiciary already punished a federal judge for saying less than this, in a law review article nobody was forced to cite as precedent.
Eddins put his attack directly into a ruling Hawaii courts must now follow. If the Supreme Court declines to act, it tells every liberal state judge in the country the bench is a free platform for political attacks with zero consequences attached.
Sources:
- Alex Swoyer, "Supreme Court asked to punish Hawaii Supreme Court justices over 'white sight' claim," The Washington Times, August 17, 2026.
- "AFPI Asks SCOTUS to Consider Discipline of Three Hawaii Justices Over 'White Sight' Opinion," America First Policy Institute, August 14, 2026.
- "Hawaii Justices' Inflammatory Attack on the U.S. Supreme Court," National Review, July 2026.
- "Letter: Hawaii Supreme Court wrong to rock the boat," Honolulu Star-Advertiser, July 31, 2026.
