A Hawaii Supreme Court ruling issued Wednesday has opened the way for a group of University of Hawaii graduate assistants to petition to be classified as public employees with collective bargaining rights.

Members of the UH graduate assistant organization Academic Labor United have argued that the salaried jobs performed by UH’s 1,500 graduate assistants have evolved well beyond that of entry-level “student help” and are critical to the university’s functioning, and that they should be considered public employees with the right to organize.

The group filed a suit in 2021 against the UH Board of Regents, the Hawaii Labor Relations Board and the state, seeking declaratory relief and challenging two state labor board decisions in 1972 that had said in part that a graduate assistant’s primary role at the university is that of a student, not a public employee.

The 2021 case was dismissed by the 1st Circuit Court on jurisdictional grounds, appealed and transferred from the Intermediate Court of Appeals to the state Supreme Court.

In a 30-page ruling by Chief Justice Mark E. Recktenwald dated Wednesday, the state Supreme Court affirmed a 1st Circuit Court ruling that the labor board’s 1972 findings “are not final rulings on whether ALU and its members are excluded” from being classified as public employees with collective bargaining rights under the Hawaii Constitution and Hawaii Revised Statutes Chapter 89.

The labor board in 1972 had been tasked mainly with deciding whether the graduate students might belong specifically in state bargaining units 7 and 8, Recktenwald wrote.

He also said that Hawaii Administrative Rules permit an organization like ALU to seek a declaratory judgment from the labor board.

Therefore, the issue of whether they could be included as public employees in another unit, such as unit 13 — “professional and scientific employees, who cannot be included in any of the other bargaining units” — remains open, Recktenwald said, and the graduate student group has not yet “exhausted its administrative remedies.”

UH officials were not immediately available for an interview late Wednesday, but a spokesperson said the university has already worked in recent years with the Graduate Student Organization to improve pay and sick leave policies.

Kawena‘ulaokala Kapahua, chair of Academic Labor United, said the high court’s ruling affirmed that graduate assistants “should have the ability to petition the labor board for a decision on our collective bargaining rights, and clearly shows they think we have a valid case. They also said that the HLRB has a ‘duty’ to rule on our case as our job duties stand now.”

Kapahua, a plaintiff in the suit, said the organization will next petition the labor board to have graduate assistants recognized as public employees, with the goal of unionizing so that they “can determine their pay and working conditions, as all workers are entitled to.”