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A state court has ordered that work be stopped on a multi-million dollar activity center at the historic Kawaiahao Church in downtown Honolulu.

Nearly 600 burial remains were discovered recently during construction work, adding to dozens of other burials that have been unearthed since the development broke ground in January 2009.

In a unanimous ruling, the Intermediate Court of Appeals barred the church from removing iwi from grounds slated for the $17.5 million multipurpose center. The panel also ordered that all construction that could disturb iwi be stopped.

Kawaiahao Church pastor Kahu Curt Kekuna said in a statement that the church was reviewing the ruling.

“Kawaiahao Church will continue to follow the direction of the courts and the agencies exercising oversight on the project,” he wrote. “We are reviewing the ruling by the Intermediate Court of Appeals and considering our options.”

The injunction on disturbing burials is in effect until the court issues a final ruling in an appeal filed by the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation on behalf of its client, Dana Naone Hall.

The Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation has argued, in part, that the state violated the law when it allowed the church development to move forward without conducting an archaeological inventory survey first.

Friday’s court ruling is emblematic of the far-reaching impacts of a Hawaii Supreme Court decision issued in August for the Honolulu rail project.

High court justices unanimously ruled that the embattled State Historic Preservation Division failed to follow its own rules in allowing an archaeological inventory survey to be completed in four phases — construction was permitted to begin on each rail phase following survey work.

The Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation argued, and the court agreed, that a full archaeological survey needed to be completed for the $5.26 billion rail project before any construction began.

In the Kawaiahao Church order, the appeals panel said that based on the Supreme Court ruling in Kaleikini v. Yoshioka, the rail case, the court is likely to rule in favor of the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation.

Based on Kaleikini, there is a substantial likelihood that we will conclude that the SHPD should have required Kawaiahao Church to compelte an AIS before State approval of the MPC project and that the SHPD violated its own rules in failing to require an AIS before permitting the project to go forward.

There had been some confusion about whether recently discovered burials at the church were subject to state burial protections because the Native Hawaiians were given Christian burials in coffins.

But the appeals panel emphasized that state burial laws apply regardless of “race, religion or cultural origin.”

In a statement, Hall cheered the decision.

“I am very grateful to the Intermediate Court of Appeals for reaffirming that there is a vital public interest in protecting human skeletal remains and burial sites ‘regardless of race, religion, or cultural origin.’ Although approximately 700 individuals have been disturbed at Kawaiaha`o, there are many hundreds more who can continue to rest in peace.”

David Kimo Frankel, an attorney for the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation, said that he didn’t know how long it would take for the court to rule in the appeal.