Three institutions built to serve Native Hawaiian families — the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, Kamehameha Schools, and a health scholarship program for aspiring Native Hawaiian doctors and nurses — are now all under legal attack at the same time.

The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands was created by a 100-year-old federal law to guarantee land to Native Hawaiians. A new lawsuit threatens to gut that mission, putting at risk more than two dozen housing projects that thousands of families on the waitlist are counting on.

At the same time, the group Students for Fair Admissions — which successfully ended affirmative action at U.S. universities — has filed suit against Kamehameha Schools, which has educated Native Hawaiian children since it was founded from the estate of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop.

Another SFFA-linked group is targeting a scholarship program that trains Native Hawaiians to become doctors and nurses for rural communities.

The stakes are real. As Sheri-Ann Daniels, CEO of Papa Ola Lokahi — the nonprofit that runs the health scholarship program — warned, rural Hawaiian communities could lose "doctors or counselors who understand us as kanaka, who understand where we live," according to Civil Beat.

These programs exist because of a history of harm. 133 years after the U.S.-backed overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, they represent a commitment to repair that harm, not a preference to be litigated away.

Sign this petition to urge Congress and federal courts to uphold the legal protections for Native Hawaiian homes, schools, and healthcare — before these lawsuits undo decades of progress.