The body of Native American Olympic gold medalist Jim Thorpe will stay put in his namesake town, the United States Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today.

The ruling, the latest in a convoluted court case over Thorpe's body, overturns a lower court ruling.Thorpe's family wanted the body returned to Oklahoma; the borough wanted it where it has been since 1957, buried along Route 903 in town.Some of Thorpe's descendants in 2010 sued under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to have his remains returned to be bured on Sac and Fox burial grounds in Oklahoma.The NAGPRA requires museums and federal agencies possessing or controlling holdings or collections of Native American human remains to inventory those remains, notify the affected tribe, and, upon the request of a known lineal descendent of the deceased Native American or of the tribe, return such remains, the 30-page ruling states."For the foregoing reasons, we will reverse the judgment of the District Court as to the applicability of Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to the burial of Jim Thorpe in the Borough, and claim. We will remand the action for the District Court to enter judgment in favor of Appellant, the Borough of Jim Thorpe," the ruling states.Thorpe died in 1953.