Four Native Hawaiians and two non-Hawaiians filed a lawsuit Thursday in U.S. District Court in Honolulu seeking to block a “race-based” and “viewpoint- based” election planned this fall as a step toward establishing a sovereign Hawaiian government.

The lawsuit, filed against the state of Hawaii, Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Native Hawaiian Roll Commission and others, argues that the Native Hawaiian election violates the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act by using race and political qualifications to determine voter eligibility.

The Native Hawaiian Roll Commission recently published a list of 95,000 Native Hawaiians eligible to vote later this year for delegates to a governance aha, or constitutional convention, to be held next year. The election is being overseen by an independent group, Na‘i Aupuni, which is funded by OHA grants through the Akamai Foundation.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Keli‘i Akina, Kealii Makekau, Joseph Kent, Yoshimasa Sean Mitsui, Pedro Kana‘e Gapero and Melissa Leina‘ala Moniz.

“The time has come to stop dividing Hawaii’s people and start uniting them,” said Akina, president of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, a public policy think tank. “At Grassroot Institute we don’t have a problem with Native Hawaiians organizing for self-determination. Our problem is with the inappropriate use of public funds by public agencies in a manner that favors one group.”

According to the suit, Akina and Makekau, both Native Hawaiians, are excluded from the roll because they decline to make the political declaration required for registration. Along with proving native ancestry, a registrant must “affirm the unrelinquished sovereignty of the Native Hawaiian people and my intent to participate in the process of self-governance.”

Gapero and Moniz, who also are Native Hawaiians, contend they were registered on the Native Hawaiian Roll without their consent. Kent and Mitsui say they were racially discriminated against when they were excluded from the roll because they do not have Native Hawaiian ancestry.

All six are Hawaii residents, except Moniz, who lives in Texas. They are represented by attorney Michael Lilly, a former Hawaii attorney general, and Robert Popper, bringing suit on behalf of Judicial Watch, a nonprofit foundation based in Washington, D.C.

“Who would believe that in this day and age U.S. citizens are being denied access to the right to vote explicitly because of their race and their points of view?” Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said in announcing the suit.

The Native Hawaiian Roll Commission launched its registry campaign in 2012, under a law passed the year before that aimed to identify and certify Native Hawaiians in order to facilitate their self-governance. The commission signed up more than 40,000 people and also incorporated names from previous Native Hawaiian registries.

The defendants named in the suit are the state of Hawaii; Gov. David Ige; OHA’s trustees and chief executive officer; Hawaiian Roll commissioners and their executive director, all in their official capacities; the Akamai Foundation; and the Na‘i Aupuni Foundation.

Clyde Namuo, executive director of the Roll Commission, said the defendants would put up a vigorous defense.

“We really can’t comment on the substance of the lawsuit until we have more time to discuss it with our attorneys,” he said. “Our general reaction is we’re just disappointed. We’re especially disappointed by some of the Native Hawaiian plaintiffs that are listed in the lawsuit. To suggest that Native Hawaiians do not have the right to self-determination, it’s disappointing for any Native Hawaiian to make that kind of statement.”

James Walther, spokesman for the state Department of the Attorney General, said he was aware of the lawsuit but could not comment. “We will be reviewing it,” he said.

OHA spokesman Garett Kamemoto also declined to comment on the pending litigation.

In an earlier court case that challenged race-based voting in Hawaii, known as Rice v. Cayetano, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000 struck down as unconstitutional a restriction that allowed only Native Hawaiians to vote in state elections for the trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Two years later an appellate court ruled further that candidates for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs could not be restricted to people of Native Hawaiian ancestry.

In this case the organization holding the election, Na‘i Aupuni, is an independent nonprofit formed in December and led by a volunteer board of directors.

According to a grant agreement posted on its website, Na‘i Aupuni receives OHA funding through the Akamai Foundation, but OHA has no direct or indirect control over its activities. OHA trustees have authorized spending up to $2.6 million on the current effort to allow Hawaiians collectively to create a governing entity independent of the state of Hawaii and OHA, the document said.

More than 527,000 people in the United States identified themselves as being of Hawaiian descent in the 2010 U.S. Census, nearly 290,000 of them living in Hawaii.