CLIENT ALERT: Sac and Fox Nation and Sons of Jim Thorpe Continue Legal Effort to Repatriate His Remains
The Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma and the sons of Jim Thorpe have taken their longstanding fight to repatriate the legendary athlete’s remains to the United States Supreme Court. On Tuesday, the tribe and Jim Thorpe’s two surviving sons, Richard Thorpe and William Thorpe, filed a petition for a writ of certiorari asking the Supreme Court to uphold a United States district judge’s ruling that the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act-known as “NAGPRA”-required a small town in Pennsylvania to participate in a repatriation proceeding. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed the federal district court’s ruling in October 2014 on the basis of a legal doctrine not recognized by the Supreme Court for decades.Read more