That subsection (338-18(a)) states:
To protect the integrity of vital statistics records, to ensure their proper use, and to ensure the efficient and proper administration of the vital statistics system, it shall be unlawful for any person to permit inspection of, or to disclose information contained in vital statistics records, or to copy or issue a copy of all or part of any such record, except as authorized by this part or by rules adopted by the department of health.
My emphasis.
This is far broader than the subsection cited by Sullivan, and restricts the circumstances under which not only the Hawaiian agency, but literally any person, without exception, may permit others to inspect, disclose, copy or issue a copy of that record. Obviously, a prerequisite for doing any of those activities is having access to the record in the first place, but no one has ever suggested that Obama did not himself have access to his original birth certificate. The issue was that without a properly handled waiver executed in accordance with the Hawaiian agency’s rules, it is actually illegal for one having access to those records to do anything in the way of permitting others to have access to those records. Placing those records in the public domain is of course the most extreme form of permitting others access imaginable, yet that is precisely what Obama had to get a waiver to do.
Quite literally, in order to release this document, the President had to ask to be treated as being above the law, even if it is a relatively trivial law in the grand scheme of things. Quite understandably, the State of Hawaii decided that this was a wise idea. That so many are prepared to insist that the President had an obligation to ask that he be treated as above the law from a very early date is far more troubling.