Kamehameha Schools paid to settle the most serious legal threat yet to its Hawaiians-first admissions policy, legal experts believe, but the agreement won't prevent future challenges to the 120-year-old practice.

However, any new case would take years before it reached the doorstep of the U.S. Supreme Court — where the latest case was when it ended yesterday.

Details of the settlement were not disclosed, but the agreement ends the four-year effort by a non-Hawaiian teenager, known only as John Doe, to enter the Kamehameha system.

School officials praised the settlement, saying they were pleased to put the case behind them and concentrate on educating Hawaiian youth.

The settlement removes the possibility that the Supreme Court might rule against Kamehameha in this case.

"We didn't think that there was a strong possibility (of losing) but that risk is always out there," said J. Douglas Ing, chairman of the Kamehameha board of trustees. "There are no guarantees and there certainly were no guarantees from our lawyers that we would win the case."

The settlement leaves intact a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision last year in Kamehameha's favor. In that 8-7 ruling, the court upheld the Hawaiians-first policy and ruled that the admissions practice does not violate federal civil rights laws.

Eric Grant, the Sacramento, Calif., lawyer representing John Doe and his mother, said the settlement doesn't preclude others from filing similar lawsuits.

"Obviously, a settlement is not exactly what either side wanted," said Grant. "But it is something both sides eventually came to terms on."

Officials also declined to discuss the terms of the settlement, although legal observers believe it had to include payment to John Doe for him to drop the lawsuit.

The settlement preserves Kamehameha Schools' policy of requiring all applicants to prove they have Hawaiian ancestors. The private school subsidizes the costs of the education it provides to Hawaiian youth.

Ing said there will be no changes to the admissions policy as a result of the settlement.

"We're not making any changes now because the policy is preserved and protected," Ing said.

Ing would not say how long Kamehameha and John Doe attorneys had been discussing a settlement, nor would he disclose who first broached the subject.

NEW CASE WOULD TAKE YEARS

"It's an excellent outcome," said Jon Van Dyke, a University of Hawai'i law professor who worked as a consultant for the school in the case.

The 9th Circuit's ruling will "stand as the governing law," he said.

Another challenge would take years of litigation and considerable attorney fees and costs in the "six-figure range," Van Dyke estimated.

Critics of the policy expressed disappointment that the U.S. Supreme Court won't have a chance to decide on the legality of what they believe is an illegal racial policy, and agree that future challenges face an uphill fight, but not an insurmountable one.

"They flinched," said attorney H. William Burgess, who filed court papers supporting John Doe in the Supreme Court case. "I think Kamehameha Schools saw that they were right on the verge of the Supreme Court probably (accepting the case). And they knew that if that happened, it would be very likely the ruling would go against them."

A decision from the Supreme Court on whether it would hear the case was pending when the two sides agreed to settle out of court.

Burgess said the next challenge to Kamehameha will likely be rejected in trial courts in Hawai'i and at the appeals level because of the 9th Circuit ruling. He added that another challenge might not be as expensive and would move through the courts quicker because the briefs in John Doe's case already outlined the legal arguments.

Although Burgess predicted future challenges, he also said he does not know of any potential challenger at this point.

HIGH-PROFILE CHALLENGE

Like Burgess, Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity in Falls Church, Va., which also urged the high court to accept the John Doe case, said he believes Kamehameha Schools wanted the settlement because it thought it might lose before the Supreme Court.

"My suspicion is that they opened their wallets in a big way to make this case go away," Clegg said.

Van Dyke, the UH law professor, said it might not be easy to find a new challenger, given the high-profile nature of the John Doe case and the lack of others stepping forward to contest the policy.

He said his personal feeling is an "overwhelming majority" of the public supports the schools and understands its history and mission.

John Doe filed the lawsuit four years ago after he was rejected for admissions, but has since graduated and is now attending a four-year college and intends to get a degree, said Grant, his lawyer.

Although the teenager's request for enrollment is moot, the suit was still alive because he was seeking money damages as a result of his rejection.

Legal observers suggest that John Doe, even if he prevailed, might have had a difficult time establishing a huge money recovery because it would be hard for the court to measure how much he was harmed, if at all.

Although he was rejected by Kamehameha, he graduated from public high school with good enough grades to enroll in college.

In the past, Grant said he didn't know how much money they would be seeking because they were focused more on establishing that the policy violated civil rights law rather than the amount of damages.

Grant also previously said his clients wanted to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court as a matter of principle. He declined yesterday to explain why they now chose to settle.

John Goemans, an attorney involved in the case on John Doe's side, declined to comment on what the teenager, now older than 18, and his mother say about the settlement. "We're satisfied," he said. "We've done the best we can for our client."

The roller-coaster case included Senior U.S. District Judge Alan Kay ruling in favor of the schools, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals deciding 2-1 in favor of the teenager and last year's 8-7 decision for the schools by a larger en banc panel of 9th Circuit judges.

Grant asked the Supreme Court to review the 8-7 decision. He needed four of the nine Supreme Court justices to agree to hear the case before the court would take up the appeal and review the legality of the admissions policy.

'GOOD RESULT FOR SCHOOLS'

Both sides had submitted their legal briefs and were awaiting word on whether the U.S. Supreme Court should accept the case.

Van Dyke speculated that it was Grant who felt he might not have the four votes among the nine justices to accept the case and became more open to the settlement because the high court had still not decided that issue.

The court docket indicated the justices reviewed legal briefs in the case three times without announcing whether it would take the case.

State Attorney General Mark Bennett, who filed legal papers urging the appeals court to uphold Kamehameha's policy, said it's hard to predict whether another challenge will be filed, but the 9th Circuit ruling made "the admission policy of the school far more difficult to challenge."

"So I think (the settlement) is a good result for the schools and we support that."

Reach Ken Kobayashi at kkobayashi@honoluluadvertiser.com.