The remains of the athlete Jim Thorpe will remain in Jim Thorpe, Pa., after the United States Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from the tribe and Thorpe’s family asking to have his remains returned to his boyhood home in what is now Oklahoma.

The Sac and Fox Nation and two surviving sons of Thorpe said that the remains were taken by Thorpe’s widow during a sacred ceremony after Thorpe’s death in 1953. She later struck a deal with the Pennsylvania towns of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk, which agreed to build a monument for Thorpe and rename the merged borough in his honor.

The tribe and Thorpe’s sons sued in 2010, citing the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

In 2013, a United States District Court judge in Pennsylvania ruled that Jim Thorpe, Pa., essentially served as a museum and must return the remains if asked to do so by direct descendants.