No, as I said, "I don't think that you're reading either the letter or the spirit of those clauses correctly," emphasis added. I simply don't think that founders or the subsequent supreme court justices ever intended a spirit of equal treatment, as you are operationalizing it, as treating everyone equally. What would become of our airline elite programs, should this be the case? There are many reasons that companies, in America, are allowed to treat people differently, and many of them are constitutional, and this is within both the letter and the spirit of the law. To extend equal protection under the law to equal treatment writ large is not extending the spirit of the law but changing it to a version you prefer.

I don't think this argument is as easy as you think. Do you really want lump all of Hawaii's residents into one racial category? If so, which one would you pick? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii#Ethnicities And do you want to classify all policies as racial by the majority racial group that they happen to affect? If so, there sure are a lot of pro-white and anti-white policies out there.

I'll concede that there are certainly circumstances where local whites will be "carded" more often than Asians, but since Asians get carded for liquor more often, maybe it balances out.

Again, perfectly consistent with the constitution, which always had an appreciate for state rights, and perfectly common outside of Hawaii.


You don't pay Hawaii state taxes, was my argument. Let's not even start with the cascading transaction and sales tax in Hawaii that raises all costs and doesn't go into your calculation that you pay more taxes. Besides, it's not about who pays more, it's about where that money goes. Locals are more invested in Hawaii, so they get more in return.

I think you have an underappreciation for or philosophical objection to states' rights, where I might mostly agree with you, but not on this specific case.