KANSAS CITY, KAN. ? A federal judge handed the Wyandotte Tribe of Oklahoma another setback in its campaign for a casino in Wyandotte County.

U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson ordered the U.S. Department of the Interior to revisit a 2002 decision that supported the tribe’s purchase of a casino site as following federal law.

Robinson based her decision Wednesday on evidence that a third party helped the tribe buy the land, which would violate a federal statute treating the land as Indian property and eligible for development as a casino.

Tribal Chief Leaford Bearskin declined to comment specifically on the ruling, saying he hadn’t seen it, but vented his frustration, “They’ve reviewed it three times.”

In 1984, federal officials paid the tribe $100,000 for lands in Ohio it had ceded to the federal government in the 1800s.

Federal law says that if that money alone is used to buy other property, the Department of the Interior is required to take that property into trust for the tribe. For the past 17 years, other tribes around the country have used that designation to develop federally chartered casinos.

The Wyandottes in 1996 used the Ohio compensation to buy the former Masonic Scottish Rite temple across the street from City Hall in downtown Kansas City, Kan., and began trying to develop a casino.

State and city officials have fought the tribe over the casino, which is next to the tribe’s Huron Indian Cemetery, eventually raiding it and closing it down last year. Robinson is also presiding over a lawsuit the tribe brought late last year challenging the raid.

Recently, state and city officials produced title company records indicating that North American Sports Management Inc. of Maitland, Fla., which is helping the tribe develop the casino, kicked in at least $5,000 for the 1996 purchase.

Robinson said Interior officials must reconsider their 2002 decision in light of the new information and report back within 60 days.

It’s just the latest legal blow in the tribe’s effort to put a casino in Wyandotte County.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver has ruled that the Huron cemetery is not reservation land, so it and the adjacent Masonic temple property can’t be eligible for gambling under another facet of federal law.

And a federal judge last year dismissed the tribe’s claim to 2,000 acres of industrial property in Kansas City, Kan., which the tribe later acknowledged it had raised as a way to force city and state officials to the bargaining table and allow the tribe to build a casino elsewhere in Wyandotte County.

The Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kan., has sued the tribe for $500,000 in damages because of the bargaining tactic.