The Oklahoma Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in a case about the constitutionality of Senate Bill 1027, which the Legislature passed to limit the number of signatures organizers can collect from the any given county. While an attorney for the state argued the law would protect the voices of rural Oklahomans, challengers said it disenfranchises urban residents.
Signed into law by Gov. Kevin Stitt in May, SB 1027 would cap the total number of signatures allowed to be submitted from any single county based on the number of votes in the prior gubernatorial election. For statutory changes, an initiative petition’s collected signatures would not be allowed to exceed 11.5 percent of the previous total number of votes in a county. That figure would not be allowed to exceed 20.8 percent for constitutional amendments.
The bill’s primary author, Sen. David Bullard (R-Durant), said in a press release he wanted to give rural counties more of a voice in whether a petition succeeds in placing a state question on Oklahomans’ ballots. Some past initiative petitions, such as State Question 788 that legalized medical marijuana, were favored in counties with the state’s largest populations, while tending to have less support in rural areas. Before SB 1027 was signed into law, there were no such restrictions in Oklahoma’s statutes.
The bill, which has been stayed by the court pending its final ruling, would also require those who collect signatures to be registered voters and to disclose to the secretary of state the source of any compensation they are receiving for such work. The bill would also create new requirements for an initiative petition’s language, such as banning the inclusion of “euphemisms” and words with a “special meaning for a particular profession or trade.” Petitions would also be required to “indicate whether a proposed measure will have a fiscal impact” and identify potential sources of funding.
On June 12, four Oklahomans — Amy Cerato, Steven McVay, Kenneth Setter and Anthony Stobbe — filed a writ of prohibition against Secretary of State Josh Cockroft and Attorney General Gentner Drummond in their official capacities, challenging the bill in its entirety.
During Tuesday’s oral arguments, attorney Randall Yates argued that the bill places unnecessary and unusual burdens on those who organize initiative petition campaigns. He asked the court to toss out the law because of its impact on future proposals pushed by citizens.
“The first provision of the Oklahoma Bill of Rights declares, ‘All political power is inherent in the people,’ and the first power reserved to the people in the Oklahoma Constitution is the power of the initiative, the power to propose laws and constitutional amendments independent of the Legislature,” Yates said. “This court has called the initiative right a fundamental right — a right to be carefully and zealously preserved to the fullest measure of the spirit and letter of the law. Senate Bill 1027 fails this exacting standard. It does not preserve the right — it frustrates it at every opportunity. It imposes county signature caps that denies the right to otherwise qualified legal Oklahoma voters. It installs a government gatekeeper to control core political advocacy, and it layers on restrictions in circulation, funding and reporting to make the process so burdensome that it would be unrecognizable to the founding generation.”
Even before SB 1027 had been signed into law by Stitt, Yates said people organizing initiative petitions already had some of the highest hurdles to clear in the nation. He said the latest legislation would enhance those challenges to levels that would make it difficult to get many initiatives to a vote of the people.
Meanwhile, Zach West, director of special litigation for the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office, argued the purpose of the bill was to foster a statewide approach to signature gathering rather than letting petitioners focus on the large population centers around Tulsa and Oklahoma City.
“It is very nearly undisputed here that, in Oklahoma, initiative petition campaigns don’t currently spend any substantial time seeking signatures outside of the major metropolitan areas. It was eminently reasonable for the Legislature to consider this discarding of suburban and rural Oklahomans a major issue worth addressing with Senate Bill 1027,” West said. “Nevertheless, petitioners have repeatedly claimed, as they have today, that SB 1027 is subject to the strictest of scrutiny, but this is mistaken under state and federal law. Under state law, the Oklahoma Constitution expressly requires the Legislature to enact suitable regulations of the initiative petition process as well as regulations to prevent corruption.”
West told justices the process of initiative petitions does not operate in a vacuum away from scrutiny by the Legislature.
“They are not self-executing. That has been a holding that has been on the books in Oklahoma now for 117 years — that our initiative and referendum regulations are not self-executing, that before any initiative right or initiative privilege can be acted upon, our Legislature must provide the details and schematics of the initiative process,” West said.
In a statement following oral arguments, House Minority Leader Cyndi Munson (D-OKC), who is running for governor in 2026, said SB 1027 interferes with the public’s right to enact change, like they did with expansion of Oklahoma’s Medicaid program, criminal justice reform efforts and road and bridge funding. In June, Oklahomans are set to vote on a proposal to raise the state’s minimum wage.
“The entire purpose of the initiative petition process is so that Oklahomans can propose changes to policy when the Legislature does not,” Munson said in her statement. “SB 1027 takes away Oklahomans’ right to fairly create meaningful change when those in power are unwilling. House Democrats have been against this legislation since day one because we recognize the way it infringes on Oklahomans and their constitutional right to petition the government.”
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Supporters of State Question 836 challenged the bill. Also referred to as Initiative Petition 448, SQ 836 would end Oklahoma’s closed primary system and replace it with open primaries where “all candidates for a covered office would appear on the same primary ballot without regard to party affiliation, and any qualified voter could vote for any candidate without regard to party affiliation.”
In September, organizers received clearance from the Oklahoma Supreme Court to begin collecting the required signatures to put the question to a vote of the people. Petitioners have until next month to collect 173,000 signatures.
Setter and Stobbe filed for a separate writ of prohibition the same day as filing their writ challenging the bill in its entirety. Setter and Stobbe’s separate filing challenged SB 1027’s retroactive application to SQ 836, which was launched before the 2025 legislative session began.
On Sept. 15, Chief Justice Dustin Rowe granted a temporary stay preventing SB 1027 from being enforced regarding SQ 836, with six justices concurring. Justice Travis Jett recused and Vice Chief Justice Dana Kuehn did not vote.
Perhaps indicating that drafters recognized SB 1027 would face constitutional challenges, the bill includes a severability clause aimed at protecting the rest of its new requirements if the county collection caps or other components are deemed unconstitutional.
Watch SB 1027 oral arguments at the Oklahoma Supreme Court
