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Judge Holds Off On Kamehameha Decision

Student Continues Attending Hawaiians-Only School

POSTED: 1:11 pm HST November 18, 2003

U.S. District Judge David Ezra said Tuesday it will be several weeks before he rules on whether a non-Hawaiian student should be allowed to continue attending Kamehameha Schools.

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The family of Brayden Mohica-Cummings, 12, challenged the private school's Hawaiians-only admissions policy. Attorneys for the school and the seventh-grader presented their arguments to Ezra this morning in federal court. Ezra told both sides that he would issue a written order in two to three weeks.

In August, Ezra ordered Kamehameha to admit the boy pending a decision on his challenge to the school's admissions policy.

The student was at first accepted into the school but then rejected after he was unable to prove Hawaiian ancestry. Although the grandparents that raised him are Hawaiian, Mohica-Cummings is not Hawaiian.

He has been attending classes at Kamehameha's Kapalama campus since August.

"He's doing great. He is making friends. He is doing well in class. He is enjoying the extra curricular activities and I think fitting in quite well," Mohica-Cummings' attorney, Eric Grant, said.

Grant said the student has not been given a hard time by the students or faculty members at Kamehameha Schools.

If Ezra rules against Mohica-Cummings, his lawyers said they will ask that he be allowed to stay in school while they appeal.

For 116 years, Kamehameha has been educating children of Hawaiian ancestry, as set out in Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop's will. Some say the admissions policy is racially discriminatory, but the school stands by its policy.

Judge Alan Kay ruled Monday that Kamehameha may continue to deny admission to non-Hawaiian students because of the unique and historical circumstances facing Hawaiians. Kay emphasized that Kamehameha receives no federal funding and because of that, the private school isn't held up to the same scrutiny as public schools. (Read Full Story)

The judge ruled in a civil rights lawsuit filed by an unidentified non-Hawaiian student last summer. The student's attorney pledged an appeal to Monday's ruling.

Last year, there was outrage from alumni and Native Hawaiian activists when a non-Hawaiian eighth-grader was admitted to the Maui campus. That student is currently attending the Maui school. After that lone admission, Kamehameha returned to its Hawaiians-only policy.


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