U.S. District Judge Alan Kay said the school’s admissions policy seeks to address cultural and socio-economic disadvantages that have beset Hawaiians since the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy.

The courts previously have struck down “race-conscious” programs in the past that give one particular ethnic group priority over another in an attempt to make up for past injustices in job opportunities or advance or in admissions to publicly financed schools.

But Kay said the Kamehameha admissions case involved a set of unique circumstances. He repeatedly stressed that the school is entirely privately financed and has space for only about 4,800 of the estimated 70,000 students of Hawaiian ancestry in grades K-12.

He found that a special trust relationship exists between the federal government and Hawaiians, and that as recently as 2002 Congress endorsed the school’s efforts via the Native Hawaiian Education Act. The law calls upon Kamehameha to redouble its efforts to educate children of Hawaiian ancestry.

Lawyers John Goemans of the Big Island and Eric Grant of Sacramento, Calif., authors of two federal court challenges to Kamehameha’s admissions policy, claimed it is discriminatory because it gives preferential treatment to Hawaiians.

But school attorneys said the admissions policy amounts to an affirmative-action plan, one designed to help offset what they say are historical inequities that have plagued Hawaiians for more than a century.

The second of the two challenges is to be heard tomorrow morning by U.S. District Judge David Ezra.

The challenge today was mounted on behalf of an unnamed Big Island boy who claimed he would be eligible to attend Kamehameha Schools, were it not for the fact that he has no Hawaiian blood.

The case before Ezra involves Brayden Mohica-Cummings, a Kaua‘i boy who was admitted by the school for the fall 2003 semester only to have the school rescind its offer after it learned that Mohica-Cummings has no Hawaiian blood.