2026-09-10 · Hawaii · Courts · Pending — not yet law

Within a week of Maui’s vacation-rental phase-out being signed, condominium owners filed two state-court suits claiming an unconstitutional regulatory taking. Neither has produced an injunction, and the ordinance’s deadlines remain in effect.¹

The two cases

Malter v. County of Maui, Second Circuit Court, Case No. 2CCV-25-0003778, filed December 19, 2025. Plaintiffs are owners at Kā‘anapali Royal on Keka‘a Drive in West Maui.

Lynam v. County of Maui, Case No. 2CCV-25-0003780, filed December 22, 2025. It seeks class-action status covering the roughly 7,000 Minatoya-list properties.

The County’s Department of the Corporation Counsel declined comment. A Malter hearing was reported set for late April 2026; we found no reporting of a merits ruling, injunction or dismissal through September 10, 2026, so the current posture is genuinely unknown to us rather than settled.

The legal question

Whether decades of grandfathered transient use under the 2004 “Minatoya opinion” created a vested right or a nonconforming use that a county cannot terminate without compensation — a Fifth Amendment and Hawaii Constitution article I, section 20 takings question — and how that interacts with HRS § 46-4(a).

Section 46-4(a) is where the fight concentrates, because it both limits county power to discontinue prior lawful uses and, since Act 17 (2024), expressly carves transient accommodations out of that limit.

1. Maui Now, “As expected, Bill 9 challenged in court; lawsuits seek to block short-term rental phaseout,” January 2, 2026 ↩
2. Honolulu Star-Advertiser, “Condo owners file lawsuit over Maui rentals law,” December 24, 2025 ↩
3. Hawaii Legal Short-Term Rental Alliance v. City and County of Honolulu, No. 1:22-cv-00247 (D. Haw.), order ↩