While Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson stated his intent to appeal the decision further, the Tenth Circuit denied his request to rehear the case.

As a result, a day later Edmondson's office announced on January 22, 2009 that it would drop the charges against Paul Jacob, Susan Johnson and Rick Carpenter who were prosecuted under the challenged law.

On December 18, 2008, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit issued a unanimous decision in the case, saying that Oklahoma's residency restriction is an unconstitutional violation of core First Amendment speech rights.

[10] Yes on Term Limits, represented by Todd Graves on behalf of the Center for Competitive Politics, filed its final appeal brief on January 7, 2008.

The January brief of YTL started out, "Oklahoma's blanket ban on nonresident petition circulators offends the First Amendment and the structure of the federal union.

It is directed at a phantom interstate menace: the presumed endemic dishonesty of nonresidents who wish to travel to Oklahoma to associate with and speak for local citizens whose own voices for political change are otherwise too faint or dispersed.

The amicus brief by the American Civil Rights Coalition responded to the assertion that a ban on non-resident circulators is effective at limiting fraud in the initiative process.

But by fabricating an unwieldy process to challenge signatures, Oklahoma cannot dislodge petition circulation from the zenith of First Amendment protection, a status this mode of expression enjoys under Meyer, Buckley, and their progeny."

Short of a ban, Oklahoma has a range of less restrictive options for addressing any specific problem it can prove has infected its petitioning process.