An Oklahoma County district judge will hear a U.S. Senate candidate’s request for an injunction Monday afternoon to stop an Oklahoma media company from excluding him from a debate.

Republican candidate Dr. Randy Grellner of Cushing, a Kingfisher High School graduate, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Griffin Communications, an Oklahoma City-based media company which owns and operates KWTV (Channel 9) in Oklahoma City and KOTV (Channel 6) in Tulsa, along with a number of state radio stations.

According to Grellner’s lawsuit, Griffin is scheduled to host a “U.S. Senate GOP Forum” to be broadcast statewide Thursday, June 9.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the Dr. Grellner for U.S. Senate campaign as well as Grellner individually, alleges that Griffin reduced the number of candidates it would include in the debate from six to five, thus excluding him from participation.

The petition alleges that the original criteria for participation promised to feature up to six of the 13 GOP candidates for retiring U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe’s unexpired term.

According to the petition, qual ifying candidates had to meet at least four of the following requirements: have a staffed campaign headquarters that is open to the public; have a campaign phone line and website; planned in-district appearances or invitations to appear and/or speak at public gatherings; monetary contributions and a campaign treasurer; campaign literature; press coverage by at least eight unique news reports in traditional media.

Candidates meeting those criteria also have to place within the top six candidates in a poll conducted by SoonerPoll.com. In the event of a tie, the candidate with the highest amount of contributions will be selected to participate, the lawsuit alleges.

A SoonerPoll reported by News 9 and News 6 on May 18 showed MarkWayne Mullin in the lead with 38.3%, followed by T.W. Shannon with 16.4%, Nathan Dahm with 5.6%, Scott Pruitt with 3.3%, Luke Holland with 2.8%.

Grellner and Adam Holley were tied for sixth place at .9% each, according to the news report.

In a press release, the Grellner campaign alleges at the time of the poll he had raised nearly $1.2 million in contributions “far and above the other candidate coming in at number six.”

The Grellner campaign also stated in the press release that Griffin TV news stations have refused to broadcast Grellner’s political ads “for a variety of reasons even though ads were produced and placed with other stations without issues or revisions.”

The lawsuit alleges that despite “undisputed evidence” furnished to Griffin that Grellner qualifies for the forum, the news station informed the campaign that only five candidates would be participating and Grellner would not be among them.

In a hearing scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Monday in Oklahoma County District Court, Grellner will seek a declaration that Griffin is contractually bound to permit his participation and an injunction barring the forum from proceeding without Grellner.