A federal judge has granted relatives of the late Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe more time to pursue a review of a lower-court ruling that denied their request to move Thorpe's body from his namesake borough to Oklahoma.

United States Court of Appeals Circuit Justice Samuel Alito on Tuesday agreed to extend the deadline to June 3.They had asked Alito for an additional 60 days to file their petition.Without the extension, they would have had to file the document by May 4.Some members of Thorpe's family, and Native American tribes, said they needed extra time to prepare a petition to review the Oct. 23 Supreme court ruling that denied their request to move Thorpe's body under a federal law governing Native American artifacts. The family and tribes had filed for a rehearing, which was denied on Feb. 5.The Sac and Fox tribes and William and Richard Thorpe had said in their petition that they believe the extension is warranted because they have a strong case for a review, that the case is important to federally recognized Indian tribes and they are members of a small tribe and need the extra time.Because they have recently been offered help from a new source, theStanford Law School Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, and it needs the additional time to prepare the request.Thorpe, a multi-sport Olympic gold medalist, died in California in 1953 without a will. His estate was assigned to his third wife, Patricia, who buried him in what is now the borough of Jim Thorpe.His body has been interred along Route 903 in the borough since 1954. But the tribes, and William and Richard Thorpe, argue that a 1990 federal law gives them the right to take the body back to Thorpe's native Oklahoma.The law orders agencies and institutions that receive federal funding to return Native American cultural items and human remains to their respective peoples.The tribes and family members had argued that because Thorpe was Native American, laws governing Native American artifacts applied to his body.The Supreme Court disagreed, ruling that the laws were meant for museums, which the borough is not. It ruled that although the arrangement to have Thorpe's body buried in the borough, far from his birthplace, was unusual, it should not be exhumed for reburial just because he was a Native American.The case has been wending its way through the courts for years. The lawsuit to exhume Thorpe's body and bury it in Oklahoma involves the borough, and its officials, Michael Sofranko, Ronald Confer, John McGuire, Joseph Marzen, W. Todd Mason, Jeremy Melber, Justin Yaich, Joseph Krebs, Greg Strubinger, Kyle Sheckler and Joanne Klitsch.