Hawaiians-only voting was the first to fall. Now it's the Kamehameha Schools' century-old admission policy that's being struck down. Yet to come is a decision in a lawsuit seeking to abolish the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and Department of Hawaiian Home Lands.

Yesterday's 2-1 decision by a federal appeals court panel overturning the Kamehameha Schools' Hawaiian preference admission policy represents the latest in a string of setbacks for Hawaiian entitlements and programs during the past five years.

And a similar 9th Circuit panel is now reviewing a lawsuit seeking to abolish OHA and the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands known as Arakaki v. Lingle. Two of the judges on the panel — Jay Bybee, who wrote the opinion in the Kamehameha Schools case, and Susan Graber, who wrote the dissenting opinion — are members of the Arakaki panel.

With the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Rice v. Cayetano ruling in 2000 that abolished Hawaiians-only voting for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the nation's appellate courts no longer "recognize the special status of Hawaiians," said Neal Milner, a political science professor at the University of Hawai'i.

"It's another step down the road away from the optimism that started in 1978," Milner said. "It's pretty much a nightmare scenario for people who want federal recognition of Hawaiians."

Milner said yesterday's decision by the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel reverses decades of gains by Native Hawaiians, starting with the Constitutional Convention of 1978 that set up the framework for many state programs, such as the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, to exist.

It also runs counter to the gains in the state courts, including the 1995 Public Access Shoreline Hawai'i decision by the state Supreme Court that upheld native Hawaiians' traditional gathering rights on private land.

John Goemans, attorney for the unidentified high school senior who sued the Kamehameha Schools to overturn its admission policy, said the Rice v. Cayetano case was seminal for the admission case because it designated Hawaiians as a racial group and not as a political or tribal group.

That means policies excluding non-Hawaiians — whether in voting, school admissions or housing programs — are discriminatory, said Goemans, who also represented Big Island rancher Harold "Freddy" Rice when he challenged OHA's voting requirements.

"The important thing about Rice is that race discrimination is not permissible, whether it's a public organization or a private entity," Goemans said.

Dick Rowland, president of the nonprofit Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, which opposes the Akaka bill, hailed yesterday's decision. He said the school's admission policy, no matter how you parse it, is race-based.

He said he believes that Kamehameha Schools will now be able to tap its "unbelievable potential" under a revamped admission policy.

"My personal opinion is that I don't think there's a smidgen of difference between a Hawaiian and someone of Irish ancestry or Filipino ancestry who says he became disenfranchised and needs special dispensation," Rowland said.

"It's kind of like an elitist attitude that the rest of Hawai'i is somehow second-rate."

The Kamehameha Schools has argued that its admissions policy is justified under federal law because it seeks to remedy social and economic ills suffered by Hawaiians as a result of the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy.

The trust said yesterday it would seek a review of the panel's decision by the full 9th Circuit Court, and that it would appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court if its request for a full-appeals-court review is rejected.

The estate, created by the 1884 will of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, is a nonprofit charitable trust that educates more than 5,000 children of Hawaiian ancestry each year.

Yesterday's decision comes as the Akaka bill, which seeks federal recognition for Native Hawaiians, is stalled in the U.S. Senate. The recognition bill has languished in Congress for five years and won't have a chance to be debated until September, despite attempts in the Senate to debate the bill last month.

"This is just a chapter in the long saga," said Jon Van Dyke, a University of Hawai'i law professor who filed a friend-of-the-court brief for OHA in the Arakaki case. Van Dyke said he believes the Kamehameha Schools' admission policy eventually will be upheld.

"This is not by any means the end of the road," he said.

Others say they're less sure.

Washington, D.C., attorney Bruce Fein, who has written a number of articles critical of the Akaka bill, said the school has an "uphill legal battle" in defending its preference policy because Native Hawaiians don't have the same "history of subjugation" that blacks and Native Americans have suffered.

"I think it's fair to say that courts are very grudging in acknowledging any kind of preference in terms of race," Fein said.

Toni Lee, a 1959 graduate of the Kamehameha Schools and one of four generations of her family to study at the Kapalama Heights campus, said yesterday's decision takes away what many Hawaiians find sacred: Pauahi's will.

Lee, president of the 2,000-member Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs, said the decision represents "an attack on the Hawaiian people" because Kamehameha is one of the last strongholds for Hawaiian culture and history.

"It's one of the last things that we as Hawaiians have, and yet we are on the cusp of losing it," Lee said. "It's just unbelievable. It's a sad day for Hawai'i and a sad day for our people. It's a sad day for all of us."