The state Supreme Court yesterday denied a request by the Lingle administration and state House and Senate leaders to reconsider a March ruling that led to the shutdown of Hawai'i Superferry.

State Attorney General Mark Bennett said there would be no further appeals, which likely means the end of the Superferry's legal saga.

The court ruled in March that a state law which allowed Superferry to operate while the state conducted an environmental impact statement was an unconstitutional special law written for one company. Superferry suspended operations indefinitely and has since pulled its catamaran, the Alakai, out of the Islands for repairs and possible leasing. A second catamaran is also up for leasing.

The Lingle administration, in a motion for reconsideration, argued that the state Legislature did not exercise power over state lands with the law and did not write the law only for Superferry. The state Constitution limits lawmakers to only writing general laws that involve state lands — in this case, land at Kahului Harbor on Maui that Superferry had access to through an operating agreement with the state.

State House and Senate leaders, in a friend-of-the-court brief, asked the court to clarify the scope of the general-law provision of the state Constitution, the constitutionality of repeal or "sunset" clauses in legislation, and the proper application of severability clauses in legislation.

State lawmakers had also expressed concern that the court's description of Superferry as a "class of one," without considering whether lawmakers had a legitimate reason for the classification, undermined the Legislature's authority to craft precise laws that reflect policy choices.

Yesterday, the court denied the state's motion and noted that issues of severability were not raised by the parties earlier in the case.

The court, however, amended its March ruling to, among other things, clarify that the case was decided on an analysis of general law and not equal protection. The court deleted language from its initial ruling regarding equal protection rights that was widely quoted in the news media, including The Advertiser.

"Our holding is based solely on our 'general law' analysis and does not in any way involve an 'equal protection' analysis, which involves a different standard," the court said.

Isaac Hall, an attorney who represented the Sierra Club, Maui Tomorrow and the Kahului Harbor Coalition in the legal challenge against Superferry, said he was pleased.

"The meat of it is absolutely the same," Hall said of the ruling. "They say it's unconstitutional special legislation."

Bennett, in a statement, said the state Department of Transportation will continue to work on an environmental impact statement for the Superferry project under the state's more stringent environmental review law. He said the state hopes Superferry will operate in Hawai'i in the future.

"The state is disappointed in the Supreme Court's ruling denying the state's motion for reconsideration in the Act 2/Superferry case," Bennett said. "The state continues to believe Act 2 was a constitutional general law and not an unconstitutional special law, and was validly enacted by the Legislature, but of course, accepts the Supreme Court's decision.

"There will be no further appeals. While it is helpful for future cases that the Supreme Court corrected legally incorrect language in its prior opinion, that correction does not in any way change the result here."

Some legal analysts and bloggers had seized on the equal protection language in the court's March ruling, suggesting the court may have opened up legal challenges to other state laws that help specific individuals or interests, including Native Hawaiians. The court had found that the state Constitution prohibits laws which provide "disparate treatment" intended to favor or discriminate against specific individuals or interests.

"As a statement of law that's — first of all — simply wrong," said Charley Foster, an attorney on Kaua'i who writes the blog "Planet Kaua'i." "We can think of laws that are passed all the time that, as a society, we want to be able to benefit specific classes and entities."

Foster said the initial ruling "would hamstring the Legislature from doing a lot of the work we want the Legislature to do."