TULSA – United States District Judge Gregory K. Frizzell in Tulsa rejected Wednesday the proposed settlement agreements from four major poultry companies totalling more than $31 million.

The ruling came one day after Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed notices in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Northern District of Oklahoma urging action on settlements in the long-running State of Oklahoma v. Tyson Foods litigation.

“I just feel completely defeated,” said LouAnn Hays, an Oklahoma poultry farmer whose seven-year contract with Tyson Foods now faces the possibility of being ended after a federal judge declined to approve proposed settlement agreements in a decades-long environmental case.

“Nobody is using sense, nobody is using science, nobody is looking at the facts. Somebody wants money and somebody wants political gain,” Hays said.

The four proposed settlements shared a common framework. Settling defendants would make one-time payments to a Monetary Relief Fund for remediation, conservation projects and attorney fees, totaling about $30.2 million. They would land-apply decreasing percentages of poultry waste, monitored by a court-appointed special master and directly pay the special master for oversight costs. If the court approved the settlements, the State would give up any current or future legal claims against the companies for poultry waste pollution.

Hays grows chickens for Tyson Foods, and the uncertainty following the rejected settlements has left her family and other Oklahoma poultry growers unsure of their futures. If Tyson exits Oklahoma, Hays and other contract farmers would finish their current agreements but would not have their contracts renewed- a scenario that could push some into bankruptcy, particularly those who took out personal loans hoping to make poultry farming a family legacy.

“We are allowing this judge to make decisions that are going to not only affect my family, but all the families in North East Oklahoma, specifically in Adair, Cherokee and Delaware counties,” Hays said.

“So right now we will grow chickens and we’ll live here until we can’t and hope that maybe Simmons or another grower will pick us up.”

The case, originally filed in 2005, addresses decades of phosphorus runoff from poultry litter polluting the Illinois River Watershed. After nearly two decades of pause, Drummond pushed to have the case further reviewed. In January 2023, the court found the companies liable and directed the parties to negotiate remedies. Years of mediation failed, and in December 2025, the court issued a sweeping judgment requiring environmental cleanup, limiting poultry waste application and imposing civil penalites. The judgment established a $10 million Evergreen Fund, administered by a court-appointed special master, to finance remediation efforts.

Following the judgment, several defendants later reached settlement agreements and asked the court to approve them and vacate parts of the judgment, requests the judge rejected.

Gov. Kevin Stitt released a statement late in the day emphasizing that Drummond could have prevented the situation.

“My heart goes out to the poultry growers in eastern Oklahoma,” Stitt said. “The uncertainty they face is unimaginable, and it was preventable if Attorney General Drummond had simply withdrawn from the 20-year-old Democratic lawsuit.”

That is what State Rep. David Hardin (R-Stillwell) urged Drummond to consider on Wednesday.

“The Attorney General and his team worked to bring forward settlement agreements that would have provided a clearer path forward in this case…. Without long-term certainty, many of them are now facing difficult decisions about whether they can continue operating. At this point, I believe it is appropriate to reevaluate the direction of this case,” Hardin said.

State Sen. Tom Woods, R-Stilwell, however, criticized the ruling. “This decision is incredibly disheartening as it puts the future of Oklahoma’s poultry industry, and the livelihoods of many Northeast Oklahoma families, once again at risk…. The proposed settlements would have offered security and stability to these farmers after more than 20 years,” he said.

Gentner, however, did not respond to requests for comment on Frizzell’s ruling or Hardin’s suggestion.

But the decision could reverberate down to the governor’s race in the June primary in which Drummond, who had what many had suggested was an insurmountable lead, may now be viewed as vulnerable.

The agreements also included releases for farmers working with the companies, even if they were not directly sued. George’s and Tyson’s settle- which allows relief for “any other reason that justifies relief.”

The judge found that settlements could only take effect if the court approves them, so the State’s agreement was conditional. He determined there was no significant change in facts or law to justify overturning the ruling, monetary penalties could not be undone and the defendants had not shown the judgment’s enforcement harmed the public interest.

Frizzell emphasized that relief is granted only in extraordinary circumstances, and the mere fact that both parties agree to a settlement does not require the court to vacate a judgment. The opinion highlighted that the parties had years to negotiate before the final judgment but only reached settlement afterward.

The judge described this as “rolling the dice,” stating “The parties’ failure to do so suggests they “roll[ed] the dice” and now seek to erase the result of that gamble through vacatur…. Providing relief from the court’s Judgment, under the circumstances, may suggest to other litigants in this district that they need not engage in good-faith settlement negotiations in the earlier stages of litigation because any disagreeable consequences can be eradicated through a post-judgment settlement.”

Ultimately, the court rejected the argument that the proposed settlements served the public interest or justified vacating the judgment leaving Oklahoma poultry farmers, including Hays and her family, holding the bag.

Gaylord News is a reporting project of the University of Oklahoma Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication. For more stories by Gaylord News go to GaylordNews. net.