Senator-elect Markwayne Mullin speaks about tribal cases and McGirt ruling

TULSA, Okla. — Oklahoma Senator-elect Markwayne Mullin is weighing in on tribal cases, the McGirt ruling and the Castro-Huerta ruling.

He said the Tribal Nations and Federal Courts were never designed to take on the burden of what state courts used to handle.

“It has been a bad situation in some areas across the state, including my hometown in Adair County, it doesn’t seem like there is a lot of coordination happening,” Mullin said.

To get some perspective on the caseloads some courts were dealing with, FOX23 spoke with court officials with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Oklahoma.

They saw a very large increase in cases following the McGirt ruling in 2020.

Prior to the McGirt ruling, the Northern District of Oklahoma saw around 200 cases a year. After the ruling, court officials said the number of cases at one point tripled.

Twenty-five additional attorneys, as well as more personnel and staff, were brought on board to handle the influx.

Since July of 2020, the Northern District of Oklahoma has opened 1,200 Indian Country cases.

750 charges were filed, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The Northern District of Oklahoma has referred 2,370 cases to Tribal Nations and 92 to the state.

Mullin, a Cherokee Nation citizen, said the court system has been a “mess” but Oklahoman lawmakers must get on the same page and not rely on help from Washington D.C. elected officials.

“There are 535 members of the House and Senate, Congress as a whole, and there are only seven, five representatives, two senators from the state. We are the minority voice, we need to solve this in Oklahoma,” Mullin said. “The tribes and the state need to come together and have a single voice saying, ‘this is what we are going to do and maybe Congress won’t even have to act.’”