An ongoing legal battle over the final resting place of Native American Olympic gold medalist Jim Thorpe continued in 2014, highlighted by a United States Third Circuit of Appeals ruling allowing his remains to stay in Carbon County.

The appeals court, located in Philadelphia, threw out a ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Caputo, of Scranton, that would have returned Thorpe's body to American Indian land in his Oklahoma birthplace.One year after Thorpe's 1953 death, his third wife, Patsy, struck a deal with local leaders to have his body buried in Jim Thorpe Borough, created by joining East and West Mauch Chunk.The decision left Thorpe's family divided.Thorpe's son, John, filed a lawsuit in 2010 citing the 1990 federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in an effort to have the body returned to Sac and Fox burial grounds in Oklahoma.John died in 2012, but his brothers, Richard and William stepped in to continue the court battle.The borough and two of Thorpe's grandsons, John Thorpe and Michael Koehler, aim to keep it where it is, at a memorial site along Route 903.The NAGPRA requires museums and federal agencies with Native American human remains to inventory them and notify the affected tribe. They must return the remains if asked by a known lineal descendant of the deceased person or by the tribe.Caputo ruled that Jim Thorpe Borough was a "museum," according to NAGPRA. Chief Judge Theodore McKee, in his Oct. 23 ruling, said NAGPRA was not intended to be wielded as a sword to settle familial disputes within Native American families.""The borough is a local government entity that maintains Jim Thorpe's burial site," the 30-page ruling states.Thorpe's "burial in the borough is no different from any other burial, except that he is a legendary figure of Native American descent. If we were to find that NAGPRA applies to Thorpe's burial, we would also have to conclude that it applies to any grave located in 'any institution or state or local government agency ... that receives federal funds and has possession of, or control over, Native American cultural items," the ruling states.Though the appeals court sided with the borough and Thorpe's grandsons, the battle is far from over as 2015 begins.Thorpe's sons and the Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma petitioned the United States Third Circuit of Appeals for a rehearing on the matter.The appeal states that the decision "unjustifiably revises Congress' broad definition of what entities are required to participate in repatriation proceedings," that the appeal panel's findings that a repatriation would be "absurd" rests on incorrect assumptions, and that a rehearing is warranted to ensure uniform precedent results.