Thorpe v. Borough of Jim Thorpe

Multi-sport Olympic gold medalist Jim Thorpe died in California in 1953 without a will. His estate was assigned to his third wife, who, over the objections of children from his previous marriages, buried him in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, a new borough that was created by merging the boroughs of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk. Thorpe was a Native American of Sauk heritage and a member of the Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma. Some of Thorpe’s children want him reburied on Sac and Fox tribal land. In 1990 Congress enacted the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which 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 descendant of the deceased Native American or of the tribe, return such remains, 25 U.S.C. 3005. In 2010, Thorpe’s son sued the Borough for violation of NAGPRA. The district court held that the Borough was a “museum,” required to disinter Thorpe’s remains and give them to the tribe. The Third Circuit reversed. Congress could not have intended the “patently absurd result” of a court resolving a family dispute by applying NAGPRA to Thorpe’s burial. . View "Thorpe v. Borough of Jim Thorpe" on Justia Law