diff --git a/scipy.spec b/scipy.spec
index b1bd0a2..2e4a5ee 100644
--- a/scipy.spec
+++ b/scipy.spec
@@ -67,7 +67,6 @@ Patch:          https://github.com/scipy/scipy/pull/19443.patch
 
 BuildRequires: %{blaslib}-devel
 BuildRequires: gcc-gfortran, gcc-c++
-BuildRequires: tomcli
 
 BuildRequires:  pybind11-devel
 BuildRequires:  python3-devel, python3-numpy-f2py
@@ -189,13 +188,17 @@ sed -i "s/\('has_openmemstream', \)'0'/\1'1'/" scipy/_lib/meson.build
 # static deps from pyproject.toml to a file, and use that with %%pyproject_buildrequires.
 #
 # See https://github.com/mesonbuild/meson-python/issues/236 for more discussion.
-tomcli-get pyproject.toml -F newline-list \
-    project.dependencies > _install-requirements.txt
 
-# Do the same for test dependencies
-tomcli-get pyproject.toml -F newline-list \
-    project.optional-dependencies.test > _test-requirements.txt
+# This could use tomcli, but we want to avoid pulling extra dependencies into ELN/RHEL.
+python3 -c '
+import tomllib
+from pathlib import Path
 
+with open("pyproject.toml", "rb") as fp:
+    data = tomllib.load(fp)
+Path("_install-requirements.txt").write_text("\n".join(data["project"]["dependencies"]))
+Path("_test-requirements.txt").write_text("\n".join(data["project"]["optional-dependencies"]["test"]))
+'
 
 %generate_buildrequires
 %pyproject_buildrequires -R _install-requirements.txt _test-requirements.txt