HONOLULU -- Judge Karl Sakamoto on Thursday morning granted a permanent injunction against the state's planned furloughs for state employees.

Sakamoto said the three furlough days a month violated workers' constitutional right to negotiate.

State law requires wages to be negotiated, Sakamoto said. The furloughs violate the "duty to bargain collectively," he said.

"This is not an act of war, this is not an act of natural disaster, and it's unclear at this point whether the emergency that's being put forth outweighs a constitutional violation that this court has found," Sakamoto said.

Attorney General Mark Bennett said the state is seriously considering an appeal.

A Circuit Court hearing on the controversial issue began at 9:36 a.m. State sheriffs limited the number of people allowed to go into the courtroom to 35 because so many turned out.

The state's three largest public worker unions, the Hawaii Government Employees Association, Hawaii State Teachers Association and the United Public Workers all filed legal challenges to Gov. Linda Lingle's plan.

"That doesn't create any more money, so we still have the issue of having to balance the budget," Lingle said.

Lingle said she has not decided whether to layoff employees as she has threatened.

A provision requiring the state to give employees 90 days notice on layoffs is no longer valid, since public workers contracts expired at the end of last month, Lingle said.

"With the contract expiring and why we were pushing so hard to get them to negotiate with us because when the contact expired they lost a lot of protections. My bottom line has always been I want to avoid layoffs and that continues to be my bottom line," she said.

Perreira told KITV he was pleased with the ruling and that he will call the federal mediator Thursday to set up negotiations. Unions are willing to take a share of the budget crisis, he said.

"We're obviously pleased with the ruling, but at the same time, we'll not that the ruling does not solve the problem that we all face and we are ready and willing to be bargaining with the governor," Perreira said.

Perreira said he hopes that that the governor will not follow through on her threat to layoff people. If she does, he said HGEA would go back to court to try and stop that.

Lawyers for HGEA have said the state has plenty of time to negotiate, since the furloughs extend over two years.

Starting this month, about 16,000 state employees would have been furloughed three days a month. That comes out to about a 14 percent pay cut.

Union attorneys told Judge Karl Sakamoto that the fiscal situation does not amount to an emergency like a terrorist attack or a hurricane since it is happening over two years.

Lingle was taking away the unions' constitutional right to bargain, the attorneys said.

Bennett said the state faces a unprecedented multimillion dollar shortfall because of a projected multibillion dollar loss in revenue.

"The governor is relieving employees of their duties for legitimate reasons. This is an emergency," Bennett said.

"To be faithful to the constitutional right, the term emergency must be interpreted as the type that requires such immediate action where collective bargaining is not possible," union attorney Herb Takahashi said in court.

Courts in California, New Jersey and other states have ruled that the state governments have the right to furlough workers, Bennett said.

"We're not saying that there can never be furloughs. We're just saying that there is a process in place, a collective bargaining process in place for resolving that issue," HGEA attorney Charles Price said.

The Lingle Administration said the governor has the right to furlough workers and said it is necessary because of he budget deficit.

The unions' leaders are at the hearing, including J.N. Musto, the head of the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly, which has been fighting cuts to the school system. HGEA Executive Director Randy Perreira, HSTA President Roger Takabayashi and UPW Director Dayton M. Nakanelua sat in the front row in court.

The four unions held a joint rally at the state Capitol on Tuesday.