Family suing Kamehameha Schools over admissions policy are getting threats, seek anonymity

A white family suing Kamehameha Schools over its Native Hawaiian admissions policy wants to stay anonymous for the duration of the case over online death threats and fears that being named publicly could affect their careers.

The backlash to the lawsuit has been ferocious. The lead attorney in the case had his home address posted on social media and a package that appeared to contain feces mailed to his front door. Others have suggested that the founder of the nonprofit leading the lawsuit should be assassinated like Charlie Kirk, the right-wing political activist.

The mother and daughter in the suit, referred to only as B.P. and I.P., are asking the court to keep their identities hidden. The decision on anonymity will be an early hurdle for whether the case proceeds.

“The abuse stemming from this case to date is extreme even for seasoned civil-rights professionals who are used to backlash,” Jesse Franklin-Murdock, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, wrote in a court declaration. “For a young girl living in the community, it is intolerable.”

In recent court filings, Kamehameha condemned the violent rhetoric but says the family should reveal their identities if they want to proceed with the case.

“They have no right to be shielded from criticism for what they are doing,” KS lawyers wrote in a court filing on Wednesday.

On the question of anonymity, two prior admissions cases against Kamehameha had two different outcomes for the minor plaintiffs.

In the first, the courts ruled that the plaintiff, known only as Doe, could remain anonymous. Kamehameha later agreed to keep the minor’s identity confidential after settling the lawsuit for $7 million.

In another case in 2010, the federal courts ruled that four non-Native Hawaiians could not remain anonymous throughout the case, which later stalled as parts of it were appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a separate 2003 case, a minor plaintiff was named. Then-seventh-grader Brayden Mohica-Cummings sued to stay at Kamehameha, but dropped the case after the school agreed to let him remain through his senior year.

‘Nothing Compares To This Case’

The current lawsuit was filed in October by the Students for Fair Admissions, an anti-affirmative action group that won a U.S. Supreme Court ruling ending the consideration of race in college admissions.

Founder Ed Blum said in court filings that backlash from that case and others was intense.

“But nothing compares to this case against Kamehameha Schools,” he wrote. “The torrent of threats, harassment, and other abuse that has been leveled at me … has far exceeded anything I’ve ever experienced.”

Blum wrote that he was so overwhelmed with emails and calls that he had to take his contact information off his nonprofit’s website.

Jesse Franklin-Murdock, the local attorney in the case, has also come under fire. He told the court that he, his wife and his family have faced threats on social media. Late last year, after the lawsuit was filed, he said he received a bag of what looked like feces from an anonymous sender and later reported the incident to the FBI.

On social media, the ʻIolani alumnus has been likened to Captain James Cook — the white explorer who died in a battle with Hawaiians on the Big Island — and been called a Nazi, although he is Jewish. And he and Blum have faced a similar, repeated refrain: “Go Home Haole!”

“I have never seen or heard anything close to what has transpired here,” he wrote in a court declaration.

The two plaintiffs who have standing to challenge the lawsuit want to go by only their initials because of the threats they’ve seen levied against Franklin-Murdock and Blum.

B.P. and I.P. are a mother and daughter living in a “small town” in Hawaiʻi who applied to Kamehameha but were denied.

I.P. is in high school and will likely turn 18 before the courts decide the anonymity issue, lawyers wrote. She plans to apply to nursing school and doesn’t want the case to hurt her chances of getting in.

Her mother, B.P., is afraid she would lose her job because she works at a small business “that heavily depends on the goodwill of the Native Hawaiian community,” the filing says.

Lawyers for the fair admissions nonprofit wrote that KS likely already knows who the family is since they applied to the school.

Even if they don’t, shielding their identities shouldn’t hurt Kamehameha’s case because the school is seeking an early dismissal of the lawsuit. If they win, then “exposing B.P. and I.P. ’s identities now serves no purpose other than gratuitously punishing this family,” lawyers wrote.

KS: ‘Public Has A Right To Know’

Kamehameha is asking the court to dismiss the case at this early stage in litigation. In a motion filed last week, school lawyers are asking the court to force the plaintiffs, I.P. and B.P., to proceed under their real names. Otherwise, they’d need to drop the lawsuit.

KS argues that court rules allowing minors to use their initials in cases shouldn’t apply here because I.P. will soon turn 18. The rule also shouldn’t apply to her mother, who is an adult.

Lawyers for the school point out that many children under the age of 18 who took the lead in landmark civil rights cases used their real names. The school points to the ongoing case of Becky Pepper-Jackson, a transgender teen who sued West Virginia to continue participating in sports.

And Kamehameha believes that not knowing the identities could hurt their case. The lawyers wrote that they need to be able to reach out to people who know I.P. and B.P. as part of research in the discovery process to evaluate their claims.

That’s especially true “in a case where an out-of-state activist plaintiff organization was forced to go trolling for plaintiffs to manufacture a suit in line with its ideological objectives,” the lawyers wrote, referencing the SFFA’s website kamehamehanotfair.org that sought families for the lawsuit last year.

In building the case, the nonprofit sought to challenge a 140-year policy. Kamehameha attorneys frame it as a fight for resources that are meant for Native Hawaiians and a matter of transparency in court records.

“The public interest in this case is immense,” the lawyers wrote. “And the public has a right to know who is attempting to employ the judicial system to effect such a fundamental reallocation of bequeathed resources from Native Hawaiians to others.”

The federal court hasn’t set a hearing yet on the motion to use the family’s initials.

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This story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.