State House and Senate leaders have dropped a proposed constitutional amendment to extend the mandatory retirement age for judges from 70 to 80 years old because the issue had become too politicized.

The House Judiciary Committee, as a compromise, had agreed last month to apply the new age requirement to judges appointed after November. Gov. Linda Lingle and others had accused majority Democrats of trying to prevent her from replacing state Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald T.Y. Moon, who reaches mandatory retirement age in 2010.

"I think both sides just lost interest," said state Rep. Tommy Waters, D-51st (Lanikai, Waimanalo), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. "It got a lot of public attention and people thought it was politicized. I guess it got too politicized."

Today is the deadline to move constitutional amendments for this session, so the proposal could not proceed unless House and Senate leaders agree to waive internal rules.

Several lawmakers said the idea was to address age discrimination and retain experienced judges, not to restrict Lingle's appointments to the courts.

State Sen. Brian Taniguchi, D-10th (Manoa, McCully), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Labor Committee, had suggested setting the judicial retirement age at 80 after other lawmakers proposed extending it to 72.

"But the AARP and a lot of the other testimony we got said this was still age discrimination," Taniguchi said.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Hawai'i had raised the issue of age discrimination as well.

State Attorney General Mark Bennett had said the compromise offered by the House Judiciary Committee eliminated the argument that the proposal was politically motivated. But Bennett also told lawmakers he wanted a task force to study alternatives to a mandatory retirement age.

Two years ago, voters opposed a constitutional amendment that would have repealed the mandatory retirement age for judges.

A separate bill designed to discourage nepotism in state government may also be dead for the session, Senate staff sources said. A provision of the bill that would have prohibited lawmakers from getting state contracts sparked a floor fight last week between Waters and state Rep. Josh Green, D-6th (N. Kona, Keauhou, Kailua, Kona). Green, a Big Island doctor with a contract with Hawai'i Health Systems Corp., believed Waters added the provision to punish Green for a previous dispute over medical-malpractice liability reform.

Waters said the provision would have applied to several lawmakers, including himself, since he gets state contracts as a defense attorney to represent some clients before the courts.

Yesterday, Waters offered to delete the provision in order to move the nepotism bill. But the Senate has yet to name senators to a conference committee with the House, a signal the bill may not move.