A lawsuit against online hotel brokers, which Bowling Green officials recently voted to join, has been dismissed by a federal judge in Louisville.

U.S. District Judge Thomas B. Russell on Tuesday said the city and state hotel tax laws are outdated and don’t cover online hotel brokers. The cities and state have amended their hotel taxes several times in recent years, but didn’t address online hotel brokers, Russell said.

If the cities want to collect the taxes, they are free to amend their ordinances, Russell said.

He wrote that the online brokers “were truly creatures of the future at the time the statute and ordinance originally were enacted,” and added, “The Court will not now step in to do what the state and local legislative bodies - both of whom can be expected to be fully aware of their legislative forebears - either failed or chose not to do.”

The city of Louisville two years ago sued hundreds of Web sites that rent discount hotel rooms, accusing the online travel companies of not paying taxes on the rooms rented. Defendants included Orbitz, Hotwire, Expedia and Travelocity, among others.

Lexington joined the lawsuit, asking Russell to award an unspecified amount from the online travel companies to the two municipalities and to the 24 cities and 25 Kentucky counties that have hotel taxes.

Bowling Green City Attorney Gene Harmon said this morning that the city had no immediate comment on the dismissal. Bowling Green is “in communication” with attorneys recently retained to pursue the suit, and they will decide within a few days what the next move will be.

Bowling Green city commissioners voted Sept. 16 to join the suit, arguing that companies like Travelocity and Hotels.com aren’t paying the city a fair share of its 4 percent local tax on hotel rooms. The city’s tax supports local tourism projects and promotions, and applies to all hotel room rentals within city limits.

Attorney Zachary Kafoglis, speaking for the city at the time, said the suit was consistent with those filed in other states.

If a hotel rents a room for $100 base price to a local customer, the city will get $4 tax, he said. But online travel firms reserve rooms at discount rates - say $70 for the same room - and then sell them to travelers at the regular price, pocketing the difference, Kafoglis said.

But while the travel firm may collect the full price, including the $4 room tax, from customers, it only pays the tax on its own $70 room price, he said. That leaves the city $1.20 short on the deal. While that may not sound like much, it adds up quickly with the volume of business done by local hotels, Kafoglis said. The suit sought payment from the last five years’ worth of online reservations, an amount “in excess of several hundred thousand dollars,” according to Kafoglis.

The ruling was a reversal for Russell, who had turned away a request to dismiss the lawsuit last year. That prompted the Web companies to ask him to reconsider the decision.

In his ruling Tuesday, Russell said he inadvertently read a meaning into the ordinances that’s not spelled out in writing. That discovery led to the ruling to dismiss the lawsuit, Russell wrote.

Several cities in Florida and Ohio, as well as San Antonio, Los Angeles, San Diego, Atlanta and Chicago, have filed similar complaints against the online travel clearinghouses.

A judge in Philadelphia dismissed that city’s lawsuit against Travelocity, Priceline and Orbitz in 2006. The judge in that case said he was “troubled” that the city had not performed an audit or tried to collect the tax before filing the lawsuit.

— Daily News reporter Jim Gaines contributed to this report.