E-Verify requirements in Hawaii: no mandate, the 2011 and 2012 bills, and Form I-9 for Compact of Free Association citizens

As of October 2026, Hawaii does not require any employer to use E-Verify. That covers private businesses, the state and county governments as employers, and companies that sell to them. A run of bills in 2011 and 2012 would have changed that, from a public-contract condition to an all-employer mandate, and none of those requirements appears in the current law we reviewed. Federal work, which is a large share of the Hawaii economy, is the main exception.

The more distinctive Hawaii compliance question is Form I-9 for citizens of the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and Palau, who live and work in the islands in significant numbers under the Compacts of Free Association. Mistakes with their documents are a more realistic risk for a Hawaii employer than any state E-Verify rule.

The 2010 to 2012 bills

Hawaii's E-Verify debate peaked early. The measures we found, all on the Legislature's archive site, fell into three groups:

• Encouragement: Senate Concurrent Resolution 128 (2010) encouraged public and private employers to use E-Verify voluntarily. We could not confirm its final status.
• Public contracts and public hiring: House Bill 1485 (2011) would have required agencies buying under HRS chapter 103D to obtain proof that a contractor uses E-Verify before signing a procurement contract, and would have required the state Department of Human Resources Development and each county personnel department to use it for new government hires. Senate Bill 2028 (2012) carried a similar procurement condition.
• All employers: Senate Bills 1464 and 1552 (2011) and 2194 (2012) would have required every employer to use E-Verify.

One drafting detail in HB 1485 shows why state bills are hard to write. It called for the check "as a prerequisite to the hiring." Under the federal program, an employer may create a case only after the person has accepted an offer and completed Form I-9, so a pre-hire check is exactly what the E-Verify memorandum of understanding prohibits.

What Hawaii public contracts actually require

Hawaii's procurement code does require proof of compliance from vendors, but not E-Verify. Under HRS § 103D-310(c), a business receiving a state or county contract of $2,500 or more shows compliance through Hawaii Compliance Express, a single online certificate that pulls status from the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs and the Department of Taxation. A vendor that is in good standing with those four agencies gets a certificate; nothing in it asks how the vendor verifies work authorization.

On the employer side, HRS § 78-1 sets citizenship and residency rules for state and county jobs: most appointees must be citizens, nationals or permanent residents, or eligible under federal law for unrestricted employment in the United States, and must be or become Hawaii residents. It contains no E-Verify step. An individual agency can still enroll on its own initiative.

Form I-9 for Compact of Free Association citizens

Under the compacts, citizens of the FSM, the RMI and Palau may live and work in the United States indefinitely as nonimmigrants. USCIS guidance sets out how that works on Form I-9:

USCIS adds two cautions. Forms I-94 issued before the compacts took effect (October 21, 1986 for the RMI and November 3, 1986 for the FSM) are not acceptable for this purpose. And an employer may not ask these employees for a passport, an I-94 or an EAD in particular: the employee chooses from the acceptable documents. Insisting on an EAD, which compact citizens are not required to hold, is the classic error. For the reverification rules in general, see I-9 reverification; for the full document lists, see I-9 List A, B and C documents.

For an employer that does use E-Verify, USCIS notes that most mismatches for these employees come from name and date of birth entries, so the full legal name and an mm/dd/yyyy date of birth should be entered exactly as they appear on the documents.

Federal work in Hawaii

Defense installations, shipyard work and federal construction bring FAR 52.222-54 into many Hawaii contracts. The clause belongs in federal contracts over $150,000 that run 120 days or more and include work in the United States, unless they are only for commercially available off-the-shelf items, and it flows down to services and construction subcontracts over $3,500. A covered contractor enrolls within 30 calendar days of award. Most then verify every new hire company-wide during the contract, plus existing employees assigned to it; state and local governments, universities and tribal governments may limit verification to employees on the contract. For a Hawaii subcontractor, that means one federal subcontract can put the whole company on E-Verify.

Staffing agencies and employers hiring across the Pacific

Hawaii agencies place hospitality, health care and construction workers across several islands, and some recruit from Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and the mainland. A few points follow from the rules above:

• Placements anywhere in Hawaii carry no state E-Verify duty, whichever island the client is on.
• E-Verify is available in Guam and the CNMI as well as the states, so an agency enrolled for a federal subcontract can use the same account for an office there; whether any local rule requires it in those territories is outside the scope of this guide.
• A worker hired in Hawaii and sent to a project on the mainland can bring that state's rules into play. A placement in Arizona, for example, falls under Arizona's all-employer mandate; see E-Verify requirements by state.
• An agency that enrolls because of one federal subcontract cannot narrow the duty by setting up a separate hiring site for that work. A private company under the FAR clause verifies all new hires company-wide during the contract, so the whole agency's onboarding has to be ready for E-Verify, not just the federal team.

The absence of a state mandate also does not mean an absence of scrutiny. Federal Form I-9 inspections and their civil penalties apply in Hawaii exactly as they do everywhere else, and in workforces with many compact citizens, document-practice errors are the ones most likely to show up. The federal penalty ranges are summarized in I-9 penalties.

A worked example

This is an invented example. A Honolulu facilities company with 90 employees cleans state office buildings under a contract won with its Hawaii Compliance Express certificate, and does not use E-Verify. It then wins a subcontract for custodial services at a federal installation that includes FAR 52.222-54. The company enrolls within 30 days and, from then on, creates a case for every new hire, including those on the state building contract. When it hires a supervisor from Chuuk who presents an FSM passport with Form I-94, its hiring manager accepts the combination as a List A document, enters N/A in the Section 1 expiration field, and does not ask for an EAD.

A Hawaii checklist

1. State and county contracts: keep the Hawaii Compliance Express certificate current; E-Verify is not part of it.
2. Federal prime contracts and subcontracts: look for FAR 52.222-54 before signing.
3. Train everyone who completes Section 2 on the FSM, RMI and Palau document rules.
4. Never require a specific document from a compact citizen.
5. If you enroll voluntarily, run cases only after an accepted offer and a completed I-9.
6. Operating as a staffing firm raises separate questions; see staffing agency license requirements in Hawaii.