The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has sent a letter to Congressional leaders urging them not to pass the Akaka bill, which would create a process for Native Hawaiian self-governance.

Opponents of the nine-year-old legislation written by Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawai'i, which has been revised several times, say the legislation goes against the American principle of equality and opens doors to discrimination on the basis of race.

In 2006, the Civil Rights Commission and the Justice Department under President George W. Bush took similar stands against the Akaka bill.

In its letter released Friday, the Civil Rights Commission said it recommended against passage of the Akaka bill "or any other legislation that would discriminate on the basis of race or national origin and further subdivide the American people into discrete subgroups accorded varying degrees of privilege."

U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawai'i, said yesterday, "They're just repeating the same rhetoric they've used before in opposing the bill. Repeating it doesn't make it so."

Supporters of the Akaka bill, Abercrombie said, "are working carefully with the Justice Department and the Obama administration to make sure the bill meets all Constitutional requirements, will be one that Congress can pass and the president can sign when it reaches his desk."

Hawai'i-born Obama has said he will sign the legislation if it is passed.

Abercrombie said, "We're very confident that the bill is being carefully vetted in cooperation with the Department of Justice and will pass any Constitutional test."

The bill would develop a process for organizing a Native Hawaiian government. It would give Native Hawaiians virtually the same rights as those established by many of the nation's 562 American Indian tribes and Native Alaskans.

The bill's opponents — most of them Republicans — have stymied the Akaka bill for years. But now Democrats control Congress.

Also at stake is control over some 1.8 million acres of land that many Native Hawaiians say was taken from them illegally in the United States' annexation of Hawai'i in 1898. The Akaka bill, if it becomes law, would provide for negotiations on the disposition of Native Hawaiian land, natural resources and other assets.