Lawmakers can renew tribal compacts over governor's objection, Oklahoma Supreme Court rules

Oklahoma lawmakers can renew state-tribal compacts over the governor’s objections, the state’s highest civil court ruled Tuesday in a long-awaited decision.

The state Supreme Court found the Legislature did not violate Oklahoma’s constitution or laws when lawmakers voted in July to extend certain compacts with tribal nations through 2024.

The legal fight over the future of the compacts turned into one of the state’s most heated political controversies last year and brought renewed attention to Gov. Kevin Stitt’s fractured relationships with tribal nations. Many tribal leaders had said the governor appeared unwilling to negotiate new compact terms and asked lawmakers to step in before the deals expired.

Stitt vetoed the Legislature’s original efforts to renew the deals, but lawmakers then met in a summer-time special session to override the governor. He immediately challenged the renewal laws in court, citing several reasons why he believed the extensions were void.

More: Why the future of Oklahoma's car tag compact with the Cherokee Nation is in dispute

The court ruled against all of the governor’s arguments. The majority found the Legislature did not break any special session rules or infringe on the governor’s legal or constitutional rights when lawmakers passed the two compact bills, Senate Bill 26x and House Bill 1005x.

The latter covered tobacco-tax agreements while the former applied to the state’s three car tag compacts with the Cherokee, Chickasaw and Choctaw nations.

“We read S.B. 26x and H.B. 1005x as the Legislature offering the tribes the option to extend their compacts while at the same time preserving the governor’s general authority to negotiate and enter into new statutory compacts,” the court said in its opinion, written by Vice Chief Justice Dustin Rowe. Stitt appointed Rowe to the court in 2019.

'Unsurprising but welcome,' Senate President Pro Tem Greg Treat says of ruling

Senate President Pro Tem Greg Treat, who was named as a defendant in the suit, along with House Speaker Charles McCall, described the ruling as “unsurprising but welcome.”

“We knew from the onset this litigation was unproductive and a waste of taxpayer money,” Treat said in a statement.

He added that he hoped state officials could “now re-shift our focus and attention to the important work of helping Oklahomans, which include our tribal partners.”

A spokesman for McCall did not immediately to a request to comment on the ruling.

The governor said in a statement that he was "thankful that today’s decision gives future governors clarity around compact negotiations."

He then went on to repeat his criticisms of license plates issued by tribal nations and question whether the ruling could impact ongoing negotiations surrounding the state's car tag agreement with the Cherokee Nation. Stitt described those talks as essential, because he wants to ensure the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority has access to Cherokee plate data. Not having that information has added up to millions of dollars in unpaid tolls, said Stitt, himself a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.

"Now that we know that tribal governments can go to the governor or the Legislature to negotiate compacts, I hope the Legislature agrees with me that we need to collect from every tag that drives on our toll roads," Stitt said.

In fact, the Cherokee Nation and most other tribes do share plate information with the state. But the turnpike authority cannot access the law enforcement database where most tribes upload the information and did not obtain plate information directly from tribes before rolling out automatic plate readers on turnpikes last year.

A bill working its way through the Legislature would allow the Department of Public Safety to share vehicle registration information with the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority in an attempt to close the data gap.

More: Oklahoma governor signs more compacts with tribal nations, here are all the details

All of the court’s nine justices signed on to Tuesday's ruling, though Chief Justice John Kane and Justice Dana Kuehn dissented in part. Kane did not specify which parts he disagreed with. But Kuehn wrote that she believed the Legislature can extend authority to the governor or take powers away, “but it may not micro-manage the governor’s execution of the authority it delegated to him.”

Stitt appointed Kuehn to the bench in 2021 and Kane in 2019.

This isn’t the first time compact disputes between the governor and lawmakers have landed in the state’s highest civil court. In decisions handed down in 2020 and 2021, the court ruled that four gaming compacts negotiated by Stitt were invalid because they did not follow the processes set out by state law.

Rowe referenced those decisions in the court’s latest ruling, saying the court recognizes the governor’s power to negotiate compacts. But any negotiations “must be in conformity with statute,” Rowe noted, citing the court’s prior rulings.

“The governor’s authority to negotiate and enter into state-tribal compacts is vested by statute, not the constitution,” Rowe wrote.

The ruling makes clear that the governor’s authority to negotiate compacts stems from state law, Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a statement.

Drummond and Stitt, two of the state’s highest-ranking elected officials and fellow Republicans, have frequently sparred over the governor’s handling of state-tribal relations. The attorney general backed Treat and McCall in the case.

Drummond said the decision affirmed lawmakers’ right to intervene in compact negotiations “when the governor fails or refuses to act in the best interest of all 4 million Oklahomans.” His remark was an apparent reference to Stitt’s repeated claims that he is working on behalf of “all 4 million Oklahomans” as he has attempted for months to limit the authority of tribal governments on tribal reservations.

“Gov. Stitt has repeatedly abused his office to wage baseless legal battles against our Native American tribes, wasting millions of dollars in state resources,” Drummond said Tuesday.

House Democratic Leader Cyndi Munson echoed Drummond's criticisms about the costs of the case.

"Tribal compacts greatly benefit all Oklahomans and with this issue now resolved, the Legislature can continue our necessary work in creating policies that will better the lives of all Oklahomans," Munson, of Oklahoma City, said in a statement.

The decision was widely anticipated for months, because the renewal laws at the center of the legal fight took effect Jan. 1. Several tribal nations opted in to the extensions and are now working to negotiate longer-term deals with the state before the clock runs out again in December.

There has been some progress. Stitt and the elected leaders of at least nine tribal nations have signed on to long-term tobacco tax agreements since the start of the year.

Editor's note: This is a developing story.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma tribal compacts can be renewed without Gov. Stitt, court says