A judge in Denver now says he misunderstood key evidence when he ruled that two payday lenders operating on the Internet were beyond the reach of state regulators because they had been sold to Indian tribes.

Denver District Judge Morris Hoffman says it’s now clear from the evidence that the sales were initially shams to cloak the businesses with tribal sovereign immunity. Yet in his new ruling, the judge still blocks the Colorado Attorney General from investigating the tribal entities further for violating state lending laws.

This bizarre twist in the seven-year-old case seems to allow Indian tribes to sell their sovereign immunity to businesses wanting to violate state laws. Critics dubbed this practice as “rent-a-tribe.” And today, at least 30 online payday lenders claim ties to Indian tribes.

The Colorado Attorney General contends that Scott Tucker, a Leawood, Kan., millionaire and professional race-car driver, started the lending businesses but then crafted sham deals with the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and the Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska to keep states from shutting down his lucrative operation.

Earlier this month, Hoffman said that the evidence made it clear that Tucker’s initial deal with the Indian tribes was legitimate. Yet Hoffman got key facts wrong in his first ruling.

Hoffman said in that ruling that the tribes got 99 percent of the revenue from the payday lending business. In fact, the agreements gave Tucker’s business 99 percent of the revenue. Records show the business affiliated with the Miami Tribe grosses as much as $20 million a month.

Two Indian tribes making payday loans over the Internet, even in states that ban or restrict payday lending, won a court victory Tuesday when a Denver judge blocked the Colorado Attorney General from investigating them further.

The ruling is among a series of recent court decisions posing legal obstacles for states trying to enforce payday-lending laws. Courts have ruled that state regulations don’t apply to businesses owned by tribes. In recent years, a number of tribes have flouted state laws by making loans over the Internet with interest rates as high as 800 percent.

For eight years the Colorado Attorney General has been in court trying to stop businesses affiliated with the Miami tribe of Oklahoma and the Santee Sioux tribe of Nebraska from making loans online. Attorney General John Suthers argued that their claims of tribal ownership are a sham cooked up by Kansas City businessman Scott Tucker, who is better known as an endurance race-car driver.

Tucker started the business in 1998 and approached the tribes only after it came under investigation in Kansas and New York, the court found.

However, the tribes say that their ownership is legitimate. And despite the businesses’ beginnings, District Court Judge Morris Hoffman said not only did the state fail to prove tribal ownership was a sham but added that to him it is clear that the business arrangements today seem not to be shams.

“We’re very disappointed with the court’s order,” said Mike Saccone, a spokesman for the Colorado Attorney General. Attorneys for Tucker and the tribes did not comment on the ruling.

The ruling doesn’t necessarily end the investigation. While the state cannot subpoena the tribes or tribal entities, Judge Hoffman said authorities can still subpoena Tucker and his non-Indian business associates to determine if they still own and control the payday-lending business.

Housing counselors at Western Tennessee Legal Services were plenty busy, even before one of the region’s largest employers, a Goodyear tire factory in tiny Union City, shut its doors in July.

The plant closing, which put nearly 2,000 employees out of work in a rural part of the state, meant more work for counselors like Emma Covington. Covington said she already takes 18 to 20 calls a day and meets in person with people who need counseling on foreclosures and other housing issues.

Now, like many of its clients, the legal nonprofit will have to make do with less.

Earlier this year, Congress defunded the $88 million grant program administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that helped support more than 7,500 housing counselors across the country, including those at Western Tennessee. Funds run out Sept. 30.

The cuts come at a terrible time, say counseling advocates.

In the second quarter of 2011, more than 3.4 million home mortgages nationwide were 90 or more days delinquent or in the foreclosure process. More than one in five mortgage borrowers owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, according to government data.

The counseling money may not be coming back. The House Appropriations Committee recently approved a budget for 2012 that also doesn’t include any HUD housing counseling dollars. A group of senators is trying to restore funding, but even if successful, it is unlikely that funds will reach counselors before next spring, at the earliest.

The looming gap in funding and continued uncertainty about the program’s future means layoffs and reduced hours for counselors at nonprofits across the country at a time when demand for their services is greater than ever.