Hawaii Justice’s Unhinged Attack on Supreme Court Exposes Left’s Constitutional Crisis

A rogue Hawaii Supreme Court justice just committed what may be the most brazen act of judicial activism in modern American history—hijacking a criminal case to launch an 8-page tantrum against the Supreme Court, openly declaring his state’s defiance of constitutional authority while grotesquely comparing America’s highest court to slavery-era racists.

Justice Todd Eddins crossed every line of judicial propriety Wednesday when he weaponized a 91-page ruling in a decades-old sexual assault case to savage Chief Justice John Roberts and the Court’s conservative majority. His message was unmistakable: Hawaii will simply ignore federal constitutional law whenever progressive activists in robes decide they don’t like it.

This isn’t legal reasoning. It’s insurrection with a gavel.

The Mask Comes Off

Eddins didn’t merely suggest disagreement with Supreme Court precedent—he accused the nation’s highest court of “systematically dismantling democratic safeguards” and “trampling human dignity.” He claimed six justices have “walked away from those they are supposed to protect” and shamelessly invoked Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson, comparing today’s constitutional originalists to the architects of slavery and segregation.

Let that sink in. A state court justice just compared Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Chief Justice Roberts to the judicial monsters who denied citizenship to Black Americans and upheld “separate but equal.”

The sheer audacity is breathtaking. The intellectual dishonesty is staggering.

What Really Triggered This Meltdown

Eddins’s rage isn’t about legal philosophy—it’s about power. Specifically, the power his progressive allies have lost as the Supreme Court has returned to its proper constitutional role.

His hit list tells you everything: Dobbs, which returned abortion policy to the democratic process. Citizens United, which protected political speech. Bruen, which vindicated the Second Amendment. Trump v. United States, which recognized constitutional boundaries on prosecutorial overreach.

Translation: Eddins is furious that unelected judges can no longer impose progressive policy preferences on an unwilling nation. He’s mourning the death of the living Constitution—that magical document that somehow always requires exactly what liberals want at any given moment.

The “Colorblind” Lie

Perhaps Eddins’s most revealing—and most repugnant—claim is his accusation that the Roberts Court “sees only white” because it interprets the Equal Protection Clause as prohibiting all racial discrimination, not just discrimination against favored groups.

“It refuses to acknowledge who the Equal Protection Clause was written to protect,” he seethed.

This is the progressive playbook laid bare. To Eddins and his ideological allies, equal protection doesn’t mean equal protection. It means permanent racial preferences—a hierarchy of rights based on skin color. The 14th Amendment, in their twisted interpretation, doesn’t guarantee equality under law. It enshrines inequality as constitutional mandate.

The Founders and the Reconstruction Congress would be horrified. Equal protection means equal protection. Period. Not some groups are more equal than others.

Federalism Isn’t a Free Pass for Lawlessness

Yes, states can interpret their own constitutions to provide greater protections than federal law requires. That’s basic federalism, and no one disputes it.

But Eddins isn’t making a federalism argument. He’s declaring independence from the constitutional order itself. His opinion reads like a secession document—Hawaii will chart its own course because the legitimate Supreme Court has supposedly “abandoned” civil rights principles.

This is dangerous nonsense. State courts don’t get to nullify federal constitutional law simply because they disagree with how it’s interpreted. That’s not federalism—it’s judicial anarchy.

The Supremacy Clause exists for a reason. One nation, one Constitution, interpreted by one Supreme Court of the United States. Hawaii doesn’t get to create its own constitutional universe simply because a Democratic governor appointed an activist with a law degree and an axe to grind.

The Timing Tells the Real Story

Eddins’s unprecedented attack comes just weeks after the Supreme Court demolished Hawaii’s authoritarian “vampire rule”—a restriction so absurd it required gun owners to beg property owners for permission before exercising their Second Amendment rights on any private property open to the public.

The Court ruled 6-3 that Hawaii’s scheme was unconstitutional. Because it obviously was.

Eddins’s opinion isn’t legal analysis. It’s payback. It’s a temper tantrum from a jurist who lost and can’t accept it.

What Legal Experts Are Saying

The response from serious legal scholars has been swift and damning.

Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan called it “an unhinged attack on the legitimacy of the Supreme Court,” adding, “I haven’t ever seen something like this. And it’s not good.”

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley described the opinion as “devoid of judicial restraint and decorum,” noting that it “unleashed a torrent of rage and recrimination” while “suggesting that they are de facto racists.”

These aren’t partisan hacks. These are respected legal minds recognizing that something profoundly inappropriate just occurred.

The Broader War on Judicial Legitimacy

Eddins’s screed is part of a coordinated assault on the Supreme Court’s legitimacy that intensified the moment conservatives achieved a working majority. Progressive activists, Democratic politicians, and now rogue state judges have declared open season on the Court’s authority.

We’ve seen calls to pack the Court. Demands to impose term limits. Senators threatening justices from the Supreme Court steps. Media campaigns to delegitimize conservative jurisprudence as partisan while pretending progressive judicial activism is neutral legal reasoning.

Now we have a state supreme court justice using official opinions as platforms for political manifestos—comparing sitting justices to defenders of slavery while declaring his state’s intention to ignore constitutional rulings he dislikes.

This is how institutions die. This is how republics fracture.

The Real Constitutional Crisis

Eddins accuses the Roberts Court of threatening democracy and abandoning the rule of law. The projection is almost comical.

The Roberts Court has returned power to elected representatives and the American people. It has enforced constitutional limits on federal overreach. It has protected enumerated rights progressives wish didn’t exist. It has insisted that judges interpret law rather than make it.

That’s not abandoning the rule of law. That’s restoring it.

Eddins, meanwhile, just announced that Hawaii will follow Supreme Court precedent only when state judges approve of the outcomes. That’s not constitutional interpretation. That’s judicial supremacy—the very antithesis of democratic governance and the rule of law.

What Comes Next

The Hawaii Supreme Court just threw down a gauntlet. The question is whether other progressive state courts will follow suit—openly declaring their defiance of federal constitutional authority while cloaking their activism in sanctimonious rhetoric about protecting rights.

The Supreme Court cannot let this stand unchallenged. Neither can serious legal institutions. State court judges don’t get to exempt themselves from the constitutional order simply because they have grievances with how the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution.

Eddins was appointed by Democratic Governor David Ige in 2020. His opinion reveals exactly what that appointment was about—placing an ideologue in robes who would advance progressive policy goals regardless of constitutional constraints.

The Bottom Line

Justice Todd Eddins just proved what conservatives have known for decades: for too many on the left, constitutional law is whatever advances their political agenda, and any Supreme Court that stands in the way must be delegitimized, defied, or destroyed.

His opinion is a disgrace—an abandonment of judicial responsibility in favor of partisan point-scoring. His comparison of conservative constitutional originalism to Dred Scott and Plessy is an obscene libel that should disqualify him from any position of legal authority.

The Supreme Court isn’t weakening constitutional rights. It’s protecting them from judges who believe their policy preferences should override the Constitution itself.

Hawaii’s rogue justice just exposed the authoritarian impulse at the heart of progressive jurisprudence: obey us, or we’ll simply ignore you.

That’s not how constitutional republics function. And it’s not going to work.

The Supreme Court has the Constitution, the law, and the American people on its side. A bitter activist judge in Honolulu doesn’t get to rewrite that reality, no matter how many pages of rage he commits to print.