Huffman v. State of Oklahoma
Case Number: CV-2025-1369
Court: Oklahoma County District Court
Clients: Ashlynd Huffman and Frontier Media Group
Petition Filed: June 2, 2025
Background: In April 2025, Ashlynd Huffman, a reporter for The Frontier, submitted an open records request to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections seeking reports on the death of an inmate and other violent incidents at Allen Gamble Correctional Center in Holdenville, Oklahoma.
Though the DOC released similar reports to The Frontier less than a year earlier, the agency denied Huffman’s request, claiming that the records are confidential under a DOC policy and fall under an exemption in the Oklahoma Open Records Act that allows law enforcement agencies to shield certain records from the public.
On behalf of Huffman and The Frontier, Leslie Briggs, the Reporters Committee’s Local Legal Initiative attorney for Oklahoma, filed this lawsuit against the state of Oklahoma, alleging the DOC’s denial violates the state open records law. The lawsuit argues that the DOC does not have authority to declare public records confidential under its policy and that the agency cannot invoke the ORA’s law enforcement exemption because it’s not a law enforcement agency.
Quote: “The public has an overriding interest in accessing serious incident reports from the Department which outweighs any exception or exemption that may apply because the severity of the conditions in prisons implicates not only the constitutional rights of inmates, but the public safety of entire communities — including Department employees who are at risk of serious violence or death if conditions inside a particular facility deteriorate without public intervention,” The Frontier’s lawsuit argues.
Related: In an article about the lawsuit, The Frontier reported that some of the records it seeks are connected to the death of 37-year-old inmate Cory Aaron Stegall, who prosecutors allege was murdered by his cellmate last year.
Filings:
2025-06-02: Petition for relief for violations of the Oklahoma Open Records Act