(Update: On Monday, Oct. 6, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Keith Stitt’s petition to review his traffic ticket case. The following article remains in its original form.)
Attorney and Cherokee Nation citizen Keith Stitt filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday seeking determination of whether Oklahoma “may exercise criminal jurisdiction over an Indian for conduct in Indian County absent a valid congressional grant of authority.”
Stitt is not guaranteed a day in the Supreme Court, with justices having discretion over whether to take the case. Regardless of whether the justices grant or deny Stitt’s petition, Indian law practitioners in Oklahoma will be reading the justices’ words — no matter how few — for hints as to where they lean on issues of tribal sovereignty that have taken center stage in eastern Oklahoma since the court’s landmark July 2020 ruling that affirmed the Muscogee Nation Reservation’s continued existence for purposes of the Major Crimes Act.
Brett Chapman, Stitt’s attorney, argued in the petition that Oklahoma’s courts — primarily the Court of Criminal Appeals — “never intended” to fully accept or follow the McGirt v. Oklahoma decision and immediately began whittling away at the implications of the landmark ruling. In December 2024, for instance, the Court of Criminal Appeals ruled 4-1 that the City of Tulsa held concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute another of Chapman’s clients — Nicholas O’Brien — for a DUI offense as a “non-member” tribal citizen within the Muscogee Reservation. The court held the city had jurisdiction over O’Brien because he is an Osage Nation citizen and not a Muscogee citizen, although some of the judges signaled support for the state to have across-the-board jurisdiction over Indian defendants.
In the 2020 McGirt v. Oklahoma decision, the U.S. Supreme Court functionally affirmed eastern Oklahoma as a series of Indian Country reservations where only tribes and the federal government have prosecutorial jurisdiction over crimes involving tribal citizens. In 2022, the SCOTUS ruled in Oklahoma v. Castro Huerta that the state has concurrent jurisdiction when non-tribal citizens commit crimes against tribal citizens.
“Five years ago, this court handed down one of the most courageous and transformational rulings in the entire history of this institution, elevating righteousness over perpetuating injustice in McGirt v. Oklahoma,” Chapman wrote in Stitt’s petition. “In the face of dire warnings about chaos and disruption of the established order, this court chose fidelity to the rule of law over convenience, declaring that a century of unlawful state jurisdiction over Indian Country would not be permitted to continue simply because it had been ‘performed long enough and with sufficient vigor.’ The case before the court reveals that Oklahoma never intended to accept the restoration of proper jurisdiction. Instead, Oklahoma and its political subdivisions launched a systemic campaign of legal warfare designed to achieve through judicial erosion what it could not accomplish directly: effectively overruling this court’s landmark decision in practice.”
Ironically, Keith Stitt is the brother of Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, who has consistently pushed to limit the effects of the McGirt decision and has clashed with the leaders of sovereign tribal nations on a litany of jurisdictional and compacting issues. In 2024, the governor briefly discussed his brother’s case with NonDoc.
“It’s hilarious,” Kevin Stitt said. “But it’s back to what I’ve been saying. This is what I’ve been trying to tell people: Do you want a two-tiered system based on race? We’ve got Indians, and an Indian, remember, looks like me. It’s my brother in his Range Rover (…) driving across Tulsa — speeding — and the Tulsa Police Department wrote him a ticket, and all five tribes agreed with him that he didn’t have to pay the ticket (to the city).”
On Wednesday after the publication of this article, Stitt released a new statement about the situation, which referenced a recent settlement between the Muscogee Nation and the City of Tulsa that directs tickets issued within the city and the Muscogee Reservation to be adjudicated in the tribe’s court system.
“America was founded on the idea that everyone was created equally and the law should be applied the same regardless of your race. Remember, an Indian looks like me and Keith, and we shouldn’t be treated any differently than anyone else,” Stitt said. “If (Tulsa Mayor) Monroe Nichols really cares about justice, he’d stand up for equal application of the law. This case highlights this important issue, even if it makes Thanksgiving dinner a little awkward.”
Chapman argued his client’s case “represents the culmination of Oklahoma’s dismantlement of McGirt through a calculated two-stage strategy (…) until Oklahoma successfully reclaimed all the criminal authority over Indians in Indian Country that McGirt had declared fundamentally unlawful.”
He explained the alleged two-stage strategy in the introduction of filing:
The first stage involved using retroactivity as an excuse to reinvent McGirt as a mere judge-made procedural rule that cannot implicate Oklahoma’s subject matter jurisdiction using extraordinary proceedings in the Court of Criminal Appeals in State ex rel. Matloff v. Wallace, and flooding this court with dozens of certiorari petitions desperately seeking the overrule of McGirt. This phase culminated in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, a limited decision carving out concurrent state jurisdiction over non-Indians in Indian Country, fueling Oklahoma’s campaign of incrementally eroding McGirt’s jurisdictional framework to succeed where direct challenges failed.
The second stage, now reaching completion through this case, has delivered a blow to McGirt’s central promise, through the unchecked transformation of Castro-Huerta into something that it is not. By unilaterally imposing concurrent state jurisdiction over Indians themselves for violations of state law, Oklahoma has achieved something that seemed impossible just five years ago: McGirt now applies only to the most narrow categories of the Major Crimes Act federal prosecutions and tribal prosecutions of a limited number of Indians, while concurrent jurisdiction funnels most Indians back into state court, to the great injury of tribes who have invested heavily in their criminal justice systems and public safety programs. The practical result is that McGirt’s affirmation of the general rule that state courts lack jurisdiction to prosecute Indians in Indian Country has been reduced to a hollow shell as Oklahoma largely reassumes the very authority McGirt declared it lacked. This systematic defiance of a precedent of this court through incremental expansion of unprecedented exceptions created in a state court of last resort presents a fundamental challenge to the rule of law that demands this court’s immediate intervention.
SCOTUS could be 4th court to hear Stitt speeding ticket case
Marvin Keith Stitt was pulled over Feb. 3, 2021, on State Highway 75 by a Tulsa Police Department officer and issued a speeding ticket for going 78 miles per hour in a 50 mile-per-hour zone. During the incident, Stitt reportedly showed the officer his Cherokee Nation citizenship card and made reference to it as a “get out of jail free card,” a statement his attorney has said was made in “jest.”
Municipal prosecutors for the City of Tulsa pursued the ticket. Stitt filed a motion to dismiss that December based on the McGirt decision, arguing the city lacked criminal jurisdiction over him because he is a Cherokee Nation citizen who committed a crime within the Muscogee Nation Reservation. The motion was denied in April 2022, with the municipal judge finding Tulsa had jurisdiction to prosecute Stitt under the Curtis Act.
A second motion to dismiss was denied in May, and the judge accepted a request by city prosecutors to raise the charge against Stitt to aggravated speeding. Stitt was convicted in Tulsa Municipal Court and fined $250 on Oct. 20, 2022, but he appealed to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. In June 2023, the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held in Hooper v. City of Tulsa that the city did not have criminal jurisdiction over tribal citizens under the Curtis Act. However, in December 2024, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals decided in O’Brien v. City of Tulsa that the city did have some jurisdiction over some tribal citizens in Indian Country.
In March, the Court of Criminal Appeals reached a decision in Stitt’s appeal, based almost entirely on the O’Brien decision, finding that Tulsa Municipal Court had criminal jurisdiction over Stitt and affirming his conviction. The Muscogee Nation has also filed charges against Stitt for the speeding incident in Tulsa, as both a tribe and state may bring charges for the same crime without violating double jeopardy provisions. Under a proposed settlement agreement between the City of Tulsa and Muscogee Nation, Keith Stitt’s case in the city’s municipal court will likely be dismissed, if it has not been already.
Stitt, meanwhile, received a separate ticket for “improper lane use” in February 2024 from the City of Glenpool, which Chapman said was ultimately dismissed by the city and transferred to the Muscogee Nation. The tribe’s court records indicate Keith Stitt paid that ticket in July 2024. He is not the only member of the Stitt family to be charged with a traffic violation in Muscogee District Court. John Andrew Stitt, the governor’s son, received a traffic citation for speeding 11 to 15 miles per hour over the limit in September 2024. Records indicate he paid the ticket in tribal court a month later, although online records do not indicate where the traffic stop occurred.
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Muscogee Nation sues City of Henryetta
Keith Stitt’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the City of Tulsa’s jurisdiction comes less than a month after new Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols settled a lawsuit brought by the Muscogee Nation over the same issue.
Under terms of the settlement agreement, the City of Tulsa “agrees that it will not exercise criminal jurisdiction over Indian defendants on the nation’s reservation.” Owing to a cross-deputization agreement, Tulsa Police Department officers retain the ability to cite and arrest tribal citizens within the Muscogee Reservation, but those cases will now be adjudicated in tribal court under the agreement, which is still pending before U.S. District Court Judge John D. Russell, who has yet to rule on a motion made in March by Gov. Kevin Stitt to intervene in the case.
As the Tulsa settlement was announced, the governor criticized the agreement and said it “sets a concerning precedent and will make it impossible for elected officials and Oklahoma law enforcement to protect their communities.”
“I will take every action to reverse course and ensure the rule of law is the same for everyone,” Kevin Stitt said.
On Tuesday, the Muscogee Nation filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma against the City of Henryetta. The lawsuit alleges the city is violating federal law by prosecuting Muscogee citizens in municipal court for violations occurring on the Muscogee Reservation. On Sept. 23, 2024, Muscogee Nation Attorney General Geri Wisner sent a letter to Henryetta City Attorney John Insabella requesting “additional information regarding the city’s practices and policies with respect to prosecuting nation citizens and other Indians.” Wisner’s letter went unanswered, according to court filings.
Eventually, Wisner’s office contacted Insabella, who confirmed “the city’s position that it possesses jurisdiction over nation citizens and other Indians within the Creek Reservation,” according to the tribe’s brief filed Tuesday. The lawsuit largely mirrors the nation’s lawsuit filed against the City of Tulsa in 2023, with the nation arguing the prosecutions violate the McGirt decision and hurt tribal sovereignty.
“The city is engaged in law enforcement practices that conflict with the nation’s own considered approach to law enforcement involving Indians within its reservation and in so doing is further impairing the nation’s federally guaranteed rights of self-government,” attorneys for the Muscogee Nation wrote in the Henryetta lawsuit. “The city’s actions directly contravene federal law and impermissibly infringe on the nation’s right of self-government. The city has demonstrated its intention to continue asserting criminal jurisdiction over Indians for conduct within the Creek Reservation absent judicial intervention.”
Muskogee Nation Chief David Hill pointed to the recent settlement agreement with the City of Tulsa as a blueprint for how the dispute in Henryetta could play out.
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“While we continue to seek collaboration that should take place outside of the courts, we cannot sit idly by while federal law is being ignored with Creek citizens and other Indians being unlawfully arrested and prosecuted by Henryetta,” Hill said. “It is the nation’s hope, however, that the recent settlement between the nation and Tulsa could be a perfect example of how these issues can be resolved.”
Meanwhile, state District Attorneys Carol Iski and Matthew Ballard have entered into settlement talks with attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice to settle two federal lawsuits filed over the pair’s prosecution of tribal citizens in state court for crimes committed within Indian Country. Iski is the top attorney for Okmulgee and McIntosh counties, while Ballard is the lead prosecutor for Craig, Mayes and Rogers counties. The Muscogee Nation also sued Iski and Ballard earlier this year, but those cases have been consolidated with the DOJ’s litigation.
According to a pair of similar rulings from Senior Judge Claire Eagan in both U.S. District Courts for the Eastern District and Western District of Oklahoma, the parties in the Ballard and Iski lawsuits have until Aug. 11 to provide the court with a “joint report regarding the status of settlement discussions.”
The settlement negotiations arrived after the Oklahoma Legislature’s Joint Committee on State-Tribal Relations approved appropriating $175,000 for Ballard and Iski’s legal defense.
(Update: This article was updated at 9 p.m. Wednesday, July 9, to include a new comment from Gov. Kevin Stitt.)
Read Keith Stitt’s SCOTUS petition
