Four trustees from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs are bucking orders to withdraw a court document filed as part of a lawsuit that alleges the office, other members of the board and Chair Kai Kahele unfairly retaliated against CEO Stacy Ferreira.

A faction of trustees led by Kahele on Monday had voted to require the four dissenting trustees to withdraw that document that largely sides with Ferreira, who was put on paid leave in September. She sued OHA alleging whistleblower retaliation for reporting Kahele to state authorities over his handling of the office’s budget in 2025. Ferreira’s lawsuit also makes claims of sunshine law violations.

In a letter to Kahele on Friday, the dissenting trustees’ attorney, John Mackey, wrote that the vote to withdraw the document was itself retaliatory, and sought to “coerce and punish the Four Trustees in their exercise of their First Amendment rights.”

Those four trustees are Keliʻi Akina, Luana Alapa, Kalei Akaka and Carmen Hulu Lindsey.

Mackey wrote that the court document gets to questions about the powers and duties of an OHA trustee. A state judge is set to rule in August on whether that document should be allowed to remain in the court record. Withdrawing it now “would deprive all parties and the public of the court’s impartial ruling on these important questions,” Mackey wrote.

In a written statement to Civil Beat, OHA’s lawyer Joe Adams said that the office has followed its governing procedures and will await a judge’s determination on whether the four trustees’ document was properly filed. OHA has already asked the court to strike the filing.

The legal filing from the four trustees on June 29 has already prompted a formal complaint against them by Vice Chair Keoni Souza alleging several breaches of the board’s code of conduct and raising potential violations of the state’s open meetings law.

Decisions made by government boards in Hawaiʻi are required to be conducted in properly agendized meetings. There was no meeting where the board approved the four trustees’ court document.

The Office of Information Practices, which regulates the open meetings law, told OHA that communications between the four trustees and their lawyer would not typically be permitted outside of a board meeting; and, while speaking to individual trustees is permitted, serial communications from an attorney could constitute a violation, according to an email provided by OHA.

While it doesn’t answer the state open meetings law issue, a separate letter from Mackey on July 1 laid out the four trustees’ reasoning for breaking with the rest of the board. They believe the board violated Ferreira’s rights under the state’s whistleblower protection act, which is one of the claims in her lawsuit.

And in making that court filing, they were not acting in an official capacity on OHA’s behalf in the lawsuit, Mackey wrote.

The letter also explained a new piece of information that came out during Monday’s contentious board meeting: that Akaka — one of the four dissenting trustees — was one of six trustees to vote in favor of putting Ferreira on leave in September.

A footnote in the letter said she was at first against putting Ferreira on leave but was persuaded to change her vote based on advice from the board’s labor attorney. That advice did not account for “the clear whistleblower violation” and misguided Akaka, the July 1 letter says.