Judge Undoes OMMA’s Public-Safety Shutdown of Cedric Gardens

An Oklahoma judge on April 27, 2026, restored Cedric Gardens’ medical cannabis license after a 62-day emergency shutdown. The Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority had frozen the Pryor outdoor farm on February 24 over inventory it called untagged in Metrc, the state’s seed-to-sale system.

The order landed in the same month Gov. Kevin Stitt told lawmakers the medical marijuana trade was one of the greatest threats to public safety in Oklahoma. The farm’s lawyer said the file was a tracking fight, and that OMMA never opened Metrc before it pulled the license.

A Judge Restores Cedric Gardens After a 62-Day Shutdown

An administrative law judge assigned to OMMA lifted the Emergency Order of Summary Suspension on Monday, April 27, 2026. The ruling put Cedric Gardens Inc., a licensed commercial grower that runs one of Oklahoma’s largest outdoor cannabis farms, back in legal operation.

OMMA had issued the emergency order on February 24, 2026. That freeze barred the farm from growing, moving, or selling medical marijuana until the judge acted. Co-owner Susan Brosky said the company was elated the emergency summary suspension was lifted, and that it has never put product on the market that posed a public safety risk.

In a statement the same day as the ruling, the company identified the matter as OMMA Case No. OMMA-2026-122 and said it also does business as Black Cat Farms. The public written opinion was not posted with the announcement, so the cleanest record of what the judge did is the lift itself.

THE SHUTDOWN CLOCK

1. February 2, 2026: Gov. Kevin Stitt, in his State of the State address, calls the marijuana industry one of the greatest threats to public safety and asks lawmakers to send repeal back to voters.
2. February 24, 2026: OMMA issues an Emergency Order of Summary Suspension against Cedric Gardens, citing flower and shake it calls untagged and unreconcilable in Metrc.
3. April 27, 2026: The administrative law judge lifts that emergency order and restores the grower’s right to operate.

Twenty-two days separate the speech from the shutdown. Sixty-two days separate the shutdown from the lift. That is the whole emergency, start to finish, as a public-safety case against one licensed outdoor farm.

1,923 Pounds of Flower and a Tracking Gap

OMMA’s order alleged that 348 totes and bags on the premises held 1,923 pounds of flower and 5,742 pounds of shake that were untagged and unreconcilable in Metrc. Combined, that is 7,665 pounds of harvested material, enough weight to justify an emergency if the agency could show the product was off the books and headed somewhere it should not go.

Cedric Gardens said the product was compliant, that OMMA had approved its practices year after year without a citation, and that the tracking system already had the harvest. Dana L. Kurtz of Wirth Law Office, who represents the farm, put the hole in the state’s file in plain terms.

We proved that there was no public safety threat, and that Cedric Gardens’ business practices were approved by OMMA every year without ever citing or disciplining the business. We also established that all of the product was completely reconcilable in Metrc, which OMMA did not even bother to check before suspending the license without any evidence.

Dana L. Kurtz, attorney, Wirth Law Office

The company’s April 27 statement went further on the numbers inside Metrc. It said the farm already had 852 active, tagged packages in the state system, covering every strain and category inspectors had seen, with weights, strain names, batch numbers, and locations logged before the agency arrived. That package count is the grower’s account. It has not been independently posted by OMMA.

OMMA’S COUNT VERSUS THE FARM’S

Brosky added a second line after the ruling: all of the farm’s product is safe. That is a grower’s claim, not a lab packet released with the order. What the judge actually signed was narrower. The emergency freeze came off. The farm could work again.

A seed-to-sale tag is supposed to answer the diversion question before anyone needs an emergency. If 852 packages were already live in Metrc with weights and locations, the untagged-tote story is a fight about how inspectors counted what they saw in a barn, not about mystery product leaving Pryor. If those packages were not in the system, OMMA had a real gap. The agency did not publish its Metrc screenshots with the shutdown, and it did not comment when the license came back.

Stitt Called the Industry a Public-Safety Threat

On February 2, 2026, in his final State of the State address, Stitt made medical marijuana a headline public-safety problem. “One of the greatest threats to public safety is the out-of-control marijuana industry,” he said. He told the chamber that voters in 2018 were sold a bill of goods, that out-of-state activists had opened what he called Pandora’s box, and that Oklahoma now has more dispensaries than pharmacies.

When Oklahomans voted to legalize medical marijuana in 2018, we were sold a bill of goods. Out of state liberal activists preyed on the compassionate nature of Oklahomans. Then, it opened up Pandora’s box. Now, we have more dispensaries than we do pharmacies.

— Governor Kevin Stitt (@GovStitt) February 2, 2026

He went further in the same speech. Storefronts, he said, hide an industry that enables cartel activity, human trafficking, and foreign influence. He praised Adria Berry at OMMA and Donnie Anderson at the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics for holding back illegal activity, then argued the legal market was still too infected to patch. “We can’t put a band-aid on a broken bone,” he said. “Send the marijuana issue back to the vote of the people and shut it down.”

State Question 788 passed in 2018 with 57 percent of the vote and was written into statute. Shutting the program down would not, on that design, require another election. Stitt still asked lawmakers to refer a repeal to the ballot. The Oklahoma Tax Commission recorded more than $47 million in medical marijuana tax for fiscal year 2025. An OMMA dashboard at the time of the speech showed about 4,800 active commercial licenses to grow, process, or sell.

THE POLITICAL LEDGER AROUND THE FARM

• The 2018 vote: State Question 788 passed with 57 percent and put medical marijuana in statute.
• Fiscal 2025 tax: The Oklahoma Tax Commission booked more than $47 million from the medical marijuana tax.
• License count: OMMA’s dashboard showed about 4,800 active commercial licenses when Stitt spoke.
• The ask: Stitt told the legislature to send repeal to voters and shut the industry down.

Cedric Gardens is a licensed outdoor farm in Pryor, not a raid on an unlicensed warehouse. The emergency order still used the same public-safety vocabulary as the speech. Cartels and trafficking are real problems in Oklahoma’s illicit grow scene. They are also a poor fit for a file about whether 348 totes matched Metrc packages at a company OMMA had licensed and, according to Kurtz, never disciplined.

That mismatch is why the quiet around this case matters. Stitt’s repeal lines traveled. The Metrc argument at Cedric Gardens barely did. A licensed harvest can be folded into the out-of-control story without anyone showing a diverted pound, a failed test, or a patient complaint. The political frame does that work on its own.

How Oklahoma’s Emergency License Freeze Works

OMMA can pull a medical marijuana license before a hearing when it decides an operation endangers public health, safety, or welfare. That tool is an emergency order of summary suspension. It is built for imminent harm, a contaminated lot, a fire risk, a product already moving toward patients, not for a slow audit of tags.

Under the agency’s emergency rules on summary suspension, that finding is what lets regulators freeze a business overnight. The farm then has to sit dark while the paper catches up. Kurtz’s argument was that OMMA used that switch without checking the one database the order itself treated as proof.

A legal explainer on how a summary suspension works lays out the clock that is supposed to follow the freeze. Written notice of the alleged violations is due within 24 hours. A hearing is supposed to come within 10 days. During the freeze the licensee cannot operate and must keep marijuana products accounted for and stored.

THE STEPS AFTER AN EMERGENCY ORDER

• No prior hearing: OMMA may suspend first if it finds an imminent risk to public health, safety, or welfare.
• Written notice: The agency has 24 hours to tell the licensee, in writing, what it thinks went wrong.
• Hearing window: A hearing is supposed to be held within 10 days to decide whether the license stays down or comes back.
• Operations freeze: The business stops, and all marijuana on site has to be secured and accounted for until a judge or the agency says otherwise.

April 27 is far past a 10-day window from February 24. Either the first hearing did not end the freeze, or the fight moved into a longer administrative case. The April ruling is what finally took the emergency order off the farm. It is not the same thing as a full trial on every tagging allegation OMMA might still want to pursue.

That distinction is the whole legal risk for other growers. Winning the emergency round means the imminent-danger story failed, at least for now. It does not automatically wipe a later citation, a fine, or a regular suspension case if the agency files one on the ordinary docket.

Outdoor Harvests and the Tag Fight

Outdoor cannabis comes off the field in a short, ugly rush. Flower, trim, and shake hit totes faster than a clerk can print tags, and Metrc wants every package named, weighed, and located. A barn full of 348 totes is what a large outdoor harvest looks like on a working day. It is also what an inspector can photograph as a pile of untagged product if the tags live in the software more than on the plastic.

Shake makes that worse. It is the leaf and small material left when flower is bucked and trimmed, legally harvested, easy to bag in bulk, and easy to describe as uncounted weight if a tote and a package ID do not match on first look. OMMA’s order treated shake the same way it treated flower: untagged, unreconcilable, enough to shut the farm. The company’s answer treated both the same way too: already in Metrc.

Kurtz’s second point sits under that harvest math. She said OMMA had approved Cedric Gardens’ practices every year and had never cited or disciplined the business. If that history holds, the February 24 order was not the last step in a long enforcement file. It was the first blow, delivered as an emergency, against a licensee the agency already knew.

Large outdoor farms are the easiest place to run that play. The weight is visible. The totes are photogenic. The tracking system is a black box the public never sees. An inspector can point at a pile, say Metrc does not match, and freeze payroll, irrigation, and sales in a single order. Indoor rooms can hide a gap. A field and a drying barn cannot.

Other Oklahoma growers have spent the past two years in a separate fight with OMMA over certificates of occupancy and retroactive building rules that hit outdoor sites especially hard. Kurtz has been in that federal case too. Cedric Gardens’ Metrc round is a different statute and a different docket. It is the same pressure, applied to the same kind of farm: use a compliance tool that sounds like safety, and make the grower prove the harvest in a hurry while the lights are off.

OMMA Has Not Publicly Answered the Ruling

OMMA did not issue a public comment when the license came back. Court clerks told inquiring reporters that the underlying records were not available without an open-records request. There is no posted notice, in the material reviewed for this article, that the agency has appealed the April 27 lift or dropped every tagging claim.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The emergency order: Issued February 24, 2026, over 348 totes and bags and 7,665 pounds of flower and shake called untagged in Metrc.
• The lift: An administrative law judge restored the license on April 27, 2026, ending the 62-day freeze.
• The farm’s defense: Kurtz said the product was reconcilable in Metrc and that OMMA did not check the system before it suspended the license.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The written opinion: The judge’s full findings have not been released alongside the company’s announcement.
• A remaining case: It is not public whether OMMA is still pursuing non-emergency discipline on the same totes.
• An appeal: No agency statement confirms or denies a challenge to the April 27 order.

Anyone looking for the next filing has one official place to watch. OMMA keeps a public record of administrative actions against commercial licensees. If the agency tries to take Cedric Gardens back down, or if it closes the file, that docket is where the paper would appear.

Brosky’s relief was about the freeze, not about the politics. “We are elated that the ALJ found that OMMA’s emergency summary suspension should be lifted,” she said. “We have never provided product to the public that posed a public safety risk, all of our product is safe!” The farm can legally run again under that order. Stitt’s February request that lawmakers put repeal on the ballot is a separate fight, and it does not turn on whether 852 packages were in Metrc on a Tuesday in Pryor.

The emergency order is off Cedric Gardens. The public-safety speech that framed the season is still the state’s official line.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting on an Oklahoma administrative ruling and on public statements by the governor, the grower, and the grower’s counsel. It is for information only and is not legal advice, medical advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell, cultivate, or use cannabis. Readers who face a license action, a Metrc dispute, or a disciplinary hearing should consult a licensed Oklahoma attorney who handles medical marijuana regulation before they act. Weights, dates, and case statuses reflect the public statements and documents described here and may change if OMMA, a judge, or a later court filing revises the record.