JEFFERSON CITY — A state appeals court has sided with the Osage Nation in a dispute over a company’s plan to mine limestone in one western Missouri county.

The Missouri Court of Appeals Western District said Tuesday a limestone mining permit issued to Mid-States Materials for a site in Lafayette County should be rescinded because the company did not disclose a person with an interest in the land when it applied for its permit.

The decision , issued Tuesday, is a win for the Osage Nation. The tribe, in an April petition, said it owns land containing burial mounds that is completely surrounded by the proposed mining site.

Adjacent landowners Randal Dobyns and Leslie Dobyns also joined with the Osage Nation to oppose the mining.

They challenged a permit the Department of Natural Resources, through the Missouri Mining Commission, had issued to Mid-States Materials to mine limestone at a site to be named the Bates City Quarry.

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The court on Tuesday reversed the mining commission’s decision and sent the matter back for further consideration.

Judge W. Douglas Thomson wrote the opinion. Judges Alok Ahuja and Edward R. Ardini Jr. also signed onto the unanimous decision.

In a petition filed with the appeals court in April, the Osage Nation said the permit allowed the company to mine “where qualified experts reasonably believe human skeletal remains exist,” in violation of Missouri’s Unmarked Human Burial Sites Act.

The appeals court on Tuesday didn’t rule on whether the permit allowed the company to violate the Unmarked Human Burial Sites Act, sidestepping the question.

But it agreed with the Osage on another count in its petition that the applicants failed to disclose everyone with any interest in the land, in violation of state law.

The Tuesday opinion said that despite “C.K.” being named as a landlord on its lease, the company didn’t list her name on its mining permit application.

“C.K. should have been listed on Mid-States’s permit application and Mid-States’s failure to include C.K. rendered Mid-States’s permit application substantially incomplete,” the court said Tuesday.

Attorneys for Mid-States Materials and the Osage Nation did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

The Osage, who ceded the last of their Missouri lands in 1825, is now a federally recognized tribe of about 25,000 members.

The tribe is currently based on 1.5 million acres in northeast Oklahoma. Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear has been looking for opportunities to reconnect with Missouri.

The tribe was outbid in 2021 when it tried to purchase Picture Cave, the secluded cavern loaded with ancient art.

The tribe has also been attempting to open a casino at the Lake of the Ozarks. A separate and unrelated proposal that also called for a Lake of the Ozarks casino failed at the ballot box last month.

Meanwhile, the owner of the last Native American mound in St. Louis, Sugarloaf Mound, has agreed to eventually transfer the property to the Osage, the Associated Press reported last month .