When U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan denied a temporary injunction that would have halted New York State's crackdown against online lenders, the ruling was reported in the news media as though the native tribes that brought the suit asserting their sovereignty had lost the war, not just the first skirmish.

The fight is far from over as the case goes forward, and if history bears any indication of where this will wind up, New York's top bank regulator, Benjamin Lawsky, could be headed for a long, slow, expensive defeat.

Lawsky issued a cease-and-desist order in August to 36 online lenders operating in N.Y., nearly half of them tribally owned, which triggered two of the tribes to file suit seeking a temporary injunction. But in reports on Sullivan's recent denial of the injunction, several valid points were lost in the rush to file deadline news reports on this temporary injunction ruling.