Meantime in the U.S. Senate, Hawai'i Democrats are expected to meet with Republican leaders about bringing the bill to the floor for debate later today or sometime this week.

U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, said the bill would divide people based on their race and conflict with the nation's goal of a color-blind society.

"My impression at this point is that it is not constitutional or at least not appropriate," Chabot, the chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, told The Advertiser.

"I think it is the wrong way for the nation to be heading."

The Judiciary Committee does not have jurisdiction over the bill — it was assigned to the House Resources Committee — but Chabot and other conservative Republicans could have an influence on their colleagues.

State Attorney General Mark Bennett is expected to defend the bill at the hearing. The bill would recognize Native Hawaiians as an indigenous people and create a process for Hawaiians to form their own government.

In prepared testimony, Bennett argues that the bill would not create a race-based government. He said a new government would be made up of descendents of the indigenous people of the Islands, who Congress has already recognized through numerous federal programs because of their unique status, not their race.

"This is not just clever word play, and the contention that recognizing Native Hawaiians would create a `racial' classification would be flat wrong, and would ignore decades of consistent United States Supreme Court precedent," Bennett wrote.

Native Hawaiians, he wrote, have a special political relationship with the United States, much like American Indians or Alaska Natives.

H. William Burgess, an attorney with Aloha for All, which opposes the bill, described it in his testimony as "a radical change in existing law."