Hawaii Legislature sued over "blank" bills

by Keli'i Akina, Ph.D., President / CEO, Grassroot Institute of Hawaii

I’m pleased that the League of Women Voters of Hawaii has filed a lawsuit intended to stop so-called blankety-blank bills from being introduced at the Hawaii State Legislature.

Blankety-blank bills, which I’ve criticized before, have broad and vague titles such as “Relating to government” or “Relating to taxation,” and they contain no actual content at all, other than a bit of boilerplate language about taking effect upon approval and so on.

Also known as short-form bills or shell bills, these measures get thrown into the mix as an attempt by our legislators to bypass the Legislature’s bill-introduction deadline and the state’s constitutional requirement that a bill’s subject must be reflected in its title.

The League contends that this practice is unconstitutional because the public has no way of researching or preparing to testify on the final subject matter of such bills.

The focus of its lawsuit is SB935, titled “Relating to Government,” which during the 2025 legislative session went from being an essentially blank document to a 36-page bill about pension benefits for judges that was ultimately signed into law by Gov. Josh Green. The League says its fight is not about the contents of SB935, but rather the way it was passed.

Some lawmakers have claimed that blankety-blank bills are needed occasionally to deal with unexpected issues and emergencies that might crop up during a legislative session. But no one can argue that the pensions of judges are an unforeseen emergency.

Legislators actually appear to be using blankety-blank bills as a replacement for their former practice of “gut and replace,” which the Hawaii Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in 2021 — as the result of a lawsuit also brought by the League of Women Voters.

Similar to gut-and-replace measures, shenanigans such as blankety-blank bills can result not only in unconstitutional measures being adopted, but also greater public distrust of our legislative system — as if it wasn’t already suffering from a credibility deficit.

I’m thinking the credibility of our government is something we should all be taking an interest in, so my sincerest appreciation goes out to the League of Women Voters of Hawaii for tackling this issue head-on.

E hana kākou! (Let's work together!)