Hawaii Loses Substitute Teacher Class Action Suit, Could Owe $70 Million

Katherine Poythress/Civil Beat

Hawaii lawmakers just balanced the budget. But a class action lawsuit could cost the state $70 million more that legislators didn't account for.

The state of Hawaii may need to fork out the money to part-time teachers who say they'd been underpaid for seven years by the Department of Education.

The April 25 ruling comes at a time when the state has little money to spare.

Hawaii lawmakers have spent much of the legislative session grappling over how to make up a $1.3 billion deficit. On Friday, they achieved that goal by passing a series of tax bills and making cuts to state departments.

The exact amount the state will owe has not yet been determined. But plaintiff Dianne Kawashima's attorney told Civil Beat the figure will likely be in the tens of millions.

"We won a summary judgment establishing that the DOE underpaid part-time teachers from 2004-2011," Paul Alston, with the law firm Alston Hunt Floyd & Ing, wrote in an email on Friday. "The damages are approximately $54 million."

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