Leaders of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs want to enlist the state Legislature in its U.S. Supreme Court fight against the Lingle administration over ceded lands.

OHA board Chairwoman Haunani Apoliona yesterday said she and her colleagues will lobby lawmakers to pass a bill that would impose a moratorium on the sale of ceded lands until the "unrelinquished claims" of Native Hawaiians to those lands are settled.

Such a moratorium would mirror the language of a January 2008 Hawai'i Supreme Court decision that ordered the state not to sell or transfer ceded lands until claims by Hawaiians to those lands are resolved.

The Lingle administration appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has agreed to consider the case and will hear oral arguments in late February.

"This legislation is a means to maintain the status quo to ensure that the public lands trust is maintained and preserved in anticipation of a meaningful, fair and just reconciliation process with the Native Hawaiian people," Apoliona said.

Ceded lands are the 1.2 million acres once owned by the Hawaiian government and subsequently taken over by the United States as a result of the 1898 annexation.

Those lands were then passed to the state and designated for five purposes, including — but not exclusively for — the betterment of Native Hawaiians. They make up the bulk of state-owned lands and are 29 percent of the state's land area.

OHA attorney Sherry Broder said she believes a moratorium passed by the Legislature would help OHA's case.

"Right now, really what we have is a conflict between two branches of government," Broder said.

OHA administrator Clyde Namu'o said several lawmakers in both the House and the Senate are expected to introduce their own versions of a moratorium bill.

House Speaker Calvin Say, through a spokeswoman, said he had not yet seen the OHA bill and is taking a wait-and-see attitude on whether House leadership would support such a measure.

Senate President Colleen Hanabusa could not be reached for comment.

Sen. Clayton Hee, D-23rd (Kahuku, Kane'ohe), who heads the Hawaiian Affairs committee, said he expected to introduce his own legislation supporting the Hawai'i Supreme Court decision. Hee said Hanabusa, long a supporter of Hawaiian rights issues, has indicated to him that she will do the same.

At her own press conference yesterday on an unrelated issue, Gov. Linda Lingle declined to comment on OHA's proposal.

"I haven't seen the bill yet," Lingle said. "So I'll have to wait until I see it."

Apoliona said OHA has been grateful to Lingle for her support of Native Hawaiian issues in the past, including the restarting of payments to OHA for a share of the revenues derived from the use of ceded lands.

But OHA wants to stop the administration's appeal because it "could very well provide the justices of the Supreme Court an opportunity to undermine all Native Hawaiian programs and assets as well as undermine the legal basis for Native Hawaiian federal recognition," she said.

Bennett, in previous interviews, has insisted that the administration is bound to fight the Hawai'i court decision because the case clouds the state's title to ceded lands.

Any claims Hawaiians have to the lands should not be argued in a courtroom, but in negotiations among the state, the U.S. government and a Native Hawaiian governing entity, Bennett said. Hawaiians may have a moral claim to ceded lands but they do not have a legal one, he said.

The original lawsuit, brought by four Native Hawaiians and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs in 1994, sought to temporarily halt the sale of about 1,500 acres in Lahaina and Kona to private interests to pay for affordable-housing projects for moderate- and low-income families, regardless of whether they have Hawaiian blood, until Hawaiian claims to the lands had been resolved.