The decision is expected to take months, and the case is likely to be appealed to the supreme court.
The complete content of the Oregonian article linked above offers a fair synopsis of the case and problems with NAGPRA, but the leading paragraphs mislead the reader in a way that is irritatingly common in coverage of the case [emphasis mine - mb]:
The case pits scientists who say they have a right to study the ancient skeleton against Native American tribes who say they have a right to bury the remains of a sacred ancestor.Although most of the media attention has focused on the conflict between scientists and tribes, the legal case centers on the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which is aimed primarily at returning Native American remains in museums to tribes. The authority of the 13-year-old law has collided with the scientific value of ancient human bones for researchers who deem them vital to learning about the earliest people in the Americas.
Among the complex issues the court will address is whether skeletons as old as Kennewick Man should be considered Native American under the law.
Attorneys for the federal government and a group of four Columbia Basin tribes will maintain that the bones belong to the tribes. Attorneys for eight prominent anthropologists will argue their clients have the right to study the ancient remains before they are buried.
Although the third paragraph quoted above correctly addresses the real issues - the intent of NAGPRA and the validity of claims of cultural or genetic affiliation - the emphasized sentences suggest that the scientists (and everybody else) of course concede that these bones are "Native American", but are of such tremendous scientific importance that an exception should be made to allow some study. Furthermore, unless I am mistaken - and I've been following the case pretty closely - nobody has said anything about eventually returning bones for burial if the courts do not concur with the claims of the disputing tribes. I believe that statement is flat-out false (and this is not the first time I've seen it reported as fact), and it completely muddies the issue.
Addendum: An article of interest from July.
(More Kennewick Man links here.)