The U.S. Supreme Court handed down final rulings on several major cases in the sprint to the end of its 2026 term, which ended on June 30.
Birthright citizenship, transgender students and campaign financing were among some of the key issues decided by the Supreme Court.
To learn what these rulings mean for Hawaiʻi, HPR spoke with Camron Hurt, the state director for the nonpartisan government watchdog group Common Cause.
Interview Highlights
On initial reactions to the final rulings
CAMRON HURT: I think the best way to sum it up briefly is that Common Cause is putting on our armor and we're ready to go to war for the people. We've seen a multitude of Supreme Court decisions that have really been questionable to us, and the ones last week, especially affecting campaign finance, really put the people and their interest at a disadvantage, and it puts it behind the interest of million and billionaire donors. …
What the Supreme Court decision did was it allowed for political parties to coordinate financially directly with candidates of their choosing. That means now the party gets to solely influence financially whom they want to support, the parties are influencing the voters instead of the voters influencing the parties, and that has to be called out. It has to be stopped.
On ways for Hawai'i to respond to the Supreme Court
HURT: I come from a place where some of the laws, some of the customs, some of the traditions that are trying to be instilled in here have already been instilled where I'm from. … One of the biggest things that I think Hawaiʻi would be smart to do with redistricting, even though we don't have a problem right now, is to pass a concrete redistricting state law. I think something else would be smart to do, as we've seen the Voting Rights Act get gutted, the state should pass a Hawaiʻi Voter Rights Act. We just saw this done in Maine, and we see other states wanting to come out and do the same thing. Hawaiʻi can be progressive and proactive before these things get to our shores in a similar way that we were with the passing of the marriage equality amendment to our state constitution. So this is another way that we could do that.
On campaign financing, transgender students, and maintaining hope
HURT: Making sure that we are standing in solidarity, and making sure that our trans brothers and sisters are getting the medical care that they need. Full stop. Nothing else to be talked about. Everybody should have access to the medical care that they need. And we've seen, again, also last week in the Supreme Court ruling, we saw an attack on transgender people with their very nonsensical ban on sports. Now that's not advocating for it for one way or another. We're saying, though, why is the highest land in the office involved in something that has affected eight people to date? It doesn't make sense. And then bringing it back, though, again to the Supreme Court ruling specifically around campaign financing, this court seems to have adopted a philosophy that money is speech, and they will ride that wherever they will.
However, it's important for people to understand the history of the court. What the court has ruled as OK before — such as African Americans being three-fifths of a person — other courts have come back and found that to be actually unconstitutional or not right. So, more than anything, I don't want people to get bogged down in the time that we are and feel like there's no hope. There's a lot of hope. There's so much hope. There's so many battles being fought, and we're winning a lot. We're winning a lot. We do see the losses, and they hurt, but there are more wins than there are losses.
This story aired on The Conversation on July 6, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
