Oklahoma voters have won back the petition rules they had before 2025. In a 5–4 decision on Tuesday, November 10, the Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down Senate Bill 1027 in its entirety, ruling in McVay v. Lepak that the law restricting how citizens collect signatures to place proposals on the ballot violates the U.S. and Oklahoma constitutions. Because the court found the unconstitutional provisions could not be separated from the rest of the act, the whole law is void, and the petition law that existed before SB 1027 is back in effect.

Source: Oklahoma Voice

Writing for the majority, Justice Noma Gurich concluded that the law's signature caps blocked eligible voters from signing a petition once their county reached its limit, and that the burden fell hardest on the state's smallest counties. 'In short, this Act severely disenfranchises voters in all 77 counties,' Gurich wrote. Justices James Winchester, James Edmondson, Douglas Combs and Richard Darby joined her in the majority.

Source: Oklahoma Politics Today

What SB 1027 tried to do

Governor Kevin Stitt signed SB 1027 in May 2025. Its principal authors were Senator David Bullard, a Republican from Durant, and House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, a Republican from Bristow. The law capped how many signatures a petition could gather in each county, based on the votes cast there in the most recent governor's election: no more than 11.5 percent for a petition proposing a change in state law, and no more than 20.8 percent for a constitutional amendment. In practice, once a county hit its cap, every further signature from a legal voter in that county stopped counting.

The county caps were not the only casualty. The court also struck down requirements that signature gatherers — known as circulators — be registered Oklahoma voters, a ban on out-of-state money paying circulators, a ban on paying circulators by the signature, and new disclosure and weekly expense-reporting rules, along with new restrictions on the 'gist,' the short summary printed at the top of each petition. The majority treated those provisions as burdens on political speech and petitioning protected by the First Amendment and by Oklahoma's own constitutional guarantee of the initiative process.

A divided court

The ruling split the court sharply. Chief Justice Dustin Rowe, Vice Chief Justice Dana Kuehn, Justice John Kane and Special Justice James R. Huber dissented. Justice Travis Jett recused himself from the case. The challengers were a group of Oklahoma voters who have used the petition process before and plan to use it again; their case is cited as McVay v. Lepak, 2026 OK 81. The court gave the parties 10 days from the filing of the opinion to ask for a rehearing, and five additional days for a response — the state's one remaining route to ask the same court to reconsider.

Source: News 9

Why Oklahoma's petition process matters so much

Oklahoma is one of the states where citizens can, in effect, legislate directly when lawmakers will not act. In recent years voters used initiative petitions to expand Medicaid, legalize medical marijuana and pass criminal justice reforms — all measures the Legislature had declined to take up itself. That history is why SB 1027 drew such a fierce fight in 2025: supporters, including Bullard, argued the changes would protect Oklahoma's process from out-of-state interest groups, while opponents said the county caps were designed to make qualifying for the ballot practically impossible by discounting signatures from the state's most populous counties.

Reaction from the Capitol

House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, one of the law's authors, said he strongly disagrees with the decision and believes the court's 5–4 majority misinterpreted the Legislature's intent in striking down SB 1027. Senate Minority Leader Julia Kirt, a Democrat from Oklahoma City who voted against the measure, welcomed the ruling: 'This ruling puts power back where it belongs — with the people,' she said. Both statements were reported by News 9 in Oklahoma City.

Source: News 9

What happens next

The state has 10 days to petition for rehearing; unless the court agrees to revisit its decision, the pre-2025 petition rules govern every campaign now gathering signatures in Oklahoma. The ruling does not itself place any measure on the ballot — campaigns that were blocked or burdened by the county caps, including future marijuana and other reform efforts discussed in Oklahoma reporting, must still collect the required statewide signatures within 90 days under the restored rules. For voters, the immediate effect is simple and statewide: a signature counts the same in every one of Oklahoma's 77 counties again.