Queen Liliʻuokalani sued the United States for Hawaii's crown lands and lost

Liliʻuokalani became Queen of Hawaii in 1891. On 17 January 1893 a group of American and European businessmen, backed by US Marines, overthrew her. She was arrested after a failed royalist uprising in 1895 and signed an abdication. The kingdom's Crown Lands, about 900,000 acres^†, had paid the monarch's income. The Republic of Hawaii took them in 1894 and the United States acquired them on annexation in 1898. In 1909 she sued in the US Court of Claims for their value. In Liliuokalani v. United States (1910) the court dismissed the claim, ruling the lands belonged to the office of the crown, not to her personally. In 1909 she placed her own property in a trust for orphaned and destitute Hawaiian children^†. Her heir Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole contested the trust after her death^†. The Queen Liliʻuokalani Trust still operates. The former crown lands remain state-held "ceded lands", and their status was argued in Hawaii v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs before the US Supreme Court in 2009.