STAND. COM. REP. NO. 2803

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE: S.B. No. 2565

Honorable Ronald D. Kouchi

President of the Senate

Thirty-Third State Legislature

Regular Session of 2026

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Judiciary, to which was referred S.B. No. 2565 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO CERTIORARI REVIEW BY THE HAWAII SUPREME COURT,"

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose and intent of this measure is to establish a fixed disposition deadline requiring the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court to decide an application for certiorari within sixty days after the application is filed, to be applied prospectively to cases in which the judgment or dismissal order of the Intermediate Court of Appeals was filed on or after the effective date of this measure.

Your Committee received testimony in support of this measure from the Judiciary, Department of the Attorney General, and Office of the Public Defender.

Your Committee finds that existing law requires the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court to decide whether to accept an application for writ of certiorari within thirty days after a response is or could have been filed. However, response dates vary widely, and with cases involving multiple parties, responses may be filed on different dates, thus creating uncertainty. Additionally, existing law requires responses to be submitted within fifteen days after the application for a writ of certiorari is filed, with an optional fifteen-day extension upon request. Under the existing system, considerable judicial resources are spent continually monitoring whether a request to extend the initial fifteen-day response deadline was granted and whether or when a response was filed. This measure will improve the judicial economy by allowing these resources to be devoted to analyzing the merits of applications, not tracking deadlines.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Judiciary that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2565 and recommends that it pass Second Reading and be placed on the calendar for Third Reading.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Judiciary,

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KARL RHOADS, Chair