Courts clear the way for Jim Thorpe’s remains to be moved from namesake mountain

    A federal ruling is clearing the way for sports great Jim Thorpe’s sons to have his remains removed from the Pennsylvania town that bears his name and reinterred on American Indian land in Oklahoma.

    U.S. District Judge Richard Caputo ruled Friday that Jim Thorpe borough in northeastern Pennsylvania amounts to a museum under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

    A lawyer for Bill and Richard Thorpe says the men will pursue the legal process to have their father, who won the decathlon and pentathlon in the 1912 Olympics, returned to Sac and Fox land in central Oklahoma.

    The brothers and the tribe sued the borough and local government officials. Calls seeking comment from attorneys for the defendants weren’t immediately returned late Friday.

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    The ruling was first reported by The Legal Intelligencer.

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