Office of Hawaiian Affairs officials and Attorney General Mark Bennett today decried a lawsuit filed this week against OHA as nothing different from previous failed attempts to dismantle OHA and funding for Hawaiians-only programs.

They also said the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court late yesterday, will only serve to divert dollars that would otherwise go toward helping Hawaiians.

Six non-Hawaiian residents of the state of Hawai'i filed the lawsuit against the state seeking to stop its funding of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, in effect dismantling an agency that they believe constitutes a breach of trust with money that should be going to benefit all Hawai'i's people.

The lawsuit filed by attorney H. William Burgess says OHA exists to carry out a "racially discriminatory purpose to better the conditions of native Hawaiians and Hawaiians (at the expense of other Hawaii citizens not of the favored face)..."

OHA administrator Clyde Namu'o, in a written statement, said the agency will not make any comment on the lawsuit until its attorneys have reviewed it.

The six plaintiffs, identified in the lawsuit as "six Non-ethnic Hawaiians," are James Kuroiwa Jr., Patricia A. Carroll, Toby M. Kravet, Garry P. Smith, Earl F. Arakaki and former Honolulu Advertiser publisher Thurston Twigg-Smith. Most of the plaintiffs have previously been involved in lawsuits against OHA.

A 2002 lawsuit filed by Burgess on behalf of 16 taxpayers seeking to stop the state's funding of OHA on constitutionality grounds was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway after being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The lawsuit filed yesterday lists Gov. Linda Lingle, key members of her cabinet, OHA Chairwoman Haunani Apoliona and the other OHA trustees as defendants, claiming that they took part in a "civil conspiracy to deprive them of equal protection of the laws and equal privileges and immunities under the law."

At issue is OHA's share of revenues derived from ceded lands, state-owned lands that once belonged to the Hawaiian government.

The lawsuit comes amid much debate over OHA's share of ceded land revenues at the state Capitol. Through a decades-long series of judicial, legislative and administrative actions, the last being a February 2003 executive order issued by Lingle, OHA receives 20 percent of proceeds from ceded lands. Exactly how that is calculated has long been a subject of disagreement between OHA and the state.

A $200 million settlement agreement was reached by the state and OHA in January, which includes three parcels assessed at $187 million and $13 million cash, as well as a minimum of $15 million annually in future years. In exchange, OHA gives up the right to sue for future revenue claims. The House approved a version of the settlement but three Senate committees shelved the deal on March 17.

The lawsuit charges that "absent from the settlement agreement is any provision for the pro rate portion of the ceded lands trust for these Six Non-ethnic Hawaiians and the million or so other Hawaii citizens similarly situated."

Those people, the lawsuit says, "are adversely affected by the past and ongoing breaches and misapplications of the ceded lands trust income and corpus; and they are threatened with disenfranchisement and deprivation of their other civil rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the state that is their home."