Yalch v. City of Tulsa

Case Number: CV-26-1961

Court: Tulsa County District Court

Clients: Garrett Yalch and The Frontier

Background: On Oct. 10, 2025, Garrett Yalch, a reporter for The Frontier, submitted a request under Oklahoma’s Open Records Act seeking a variety of public records related to deaths that occurred inside the city of Tulsa’s municipal jail. Yalch also submitted a request to Allied Universal, the contractor that the city pays to manage the jail’s daily operations, seeking the same records. 

Allied Universal denied Yalch’s request, claiming it isn’t a public body subject to the ORA. Over the span of nearly a year, with free legal support from Reporters Committee Oklahoma-based attorney Leslie Briggs, Yalch and The Frontier negotiated with the city of Tulsa to obtain some of the requested documents. 

In March 2026, Yalch reported that, in a three-year span, there have been at least seven in-custody deaths due to preventable causes at the Tulsa jail. The Tulsa mayor in July 2026 announced the city would close the jail, a day after The Frontier published a story and video showing the final hours before one of those deaths. At the time, the mayor promised to expedite all outstanding open records requests about the facility.   

Still, the city has refused to turn over a number of requested records to Yalch and The Frontier, including incident reports related to each death and surveillance footage.

On behalf of Yalch and The Frontier, Briggs filed this lawsuit against the city of Tulsa and Allied Universal, arguing that they’re violating the ORA by withholding the requested records. The lawsuit states that the records “will shed light on issues of clear and profound public interest.” Without Yalch’s reporting, the public wouldn’t know about in-custody deaths at the jail at all because the city stopped issuing press releases notifying the public about these incidents in 2023, the filing notes. 

The lawsuit asks the court to order the release of the requested records and award Yalch and The Frontier reasonable attorney’s fees. 

Quote: “Without access to the public records sought by Plaintiffs’ Requests, the public has no way to know whether its municipal government is operating the Municipal Jail properly, efficiently, and without serious concern for the health, safety, and constitutional rights of those detained.”

Filings:

2026-09-25: Petition