One of the biggest highlights of 2025 was the journey of Senate Bill 54 through the legislature. This bill redefined Aggravated DUI. The previous definition only related to Alcohol DUI arrests and did not include any additional penalties over simple DUI. It only required some additional random testing. This lack of consequences resulted in Aggravated DUI rarely being charged. SB54 addressed these issues by changing the definition to consider the most dangerous and violent DUI’s. In addition to the existing criteria of 0.15 BAC, the bill adds six criteria to include excessive speed, wrong way driving, reckless driving, causing a crash, endangering a minor and eluding police. If a driver is impaired by drugs or alcohol and additionally violates one of these criteria, he will be charged with Aggravated DUI which is now a felony offense. Anyone convicted must serve a minimum amount of their sentence which is not subject to deferral or suspension.
The bill was carried by Senator Weaver and Representative George. After passing through the Senate Public Safety committee, it was sent to the Floor team. Leading up to the Senate deadline for bills to be heard on the floor, its progress seemed to stall out. Day after day leading up to the March 27 deadline, we waited for it to be placed on the agenda. A call to action of our VOID members led to more than 50 emails being sent to the Senate Floor Team asking for the bill to be heard. Finally, on the night before the deadline, it was placed on the agenda, and it subsequently passed overwhelmingly.
Next it went to the House of Representatives where it passed in both the Criminal Judiciary and the Judiciary and Public Safety Oversight committees, and then on the House floor. On April 28th, it passed its House floor vote by a vote of 81-6, and was sent to the Governor for his signature. Rather than signing it into law, he vetoed the bill. His reasoning didn’t seem to indicate that he was familiar with the language of the bill, or what it would accomplish. His written remarks included objections to increasing financial penalties not included in the language. In his written statement about the veto, the Governor stated,
“the bill removes meaningful judicial discretion by mandating jail time and increasing financial penalties, regardless of the individual circumstances of the offense.”
Quite the opposite is true of SB54. With the addition of specific criteria, this bill begins to differentiate simple DUI and aggravated DUI and thereby allow more specific charges and penalties to the type of DUI involved. One of the most disappointing statements made by the Governor in his written justification for the veto was,
“Imposing one-size-fits-all penalties risks unjust outcomes and unnecessary incarceration.”
Even a basic knowledge of how DUI is adjudicated in Oklahoma is enough to understand that over and over again, sentences for DUI are suspended or deferred. There is very little incarceration, and that, in large part, is why our streets are so full of repeat offenders. What is “unjust and unnecessary” is not the outcomes or the incarceration, but the funerals and the loss of life that needs to be protected at all costs, and that is what SB54 seeks to do.
After his veto, the Governor went on the offense. He began to contact members of the legislature, by phone and in person, and insisted that they vote “no” on the override. After a week of work by the House and Senate authors to build support and many more emails sent by VOID members hoping to secure an override, on May 29th, 2025, the legislature took up the vote in each chamber. SB54 received more than the required 2/3 majority vote needed and it will go into effect on November 1st, 2025. To read the full version of Senate Bill 54, click here.