Nevada's Supreme Court today upheld NBC's exclusion of presidential contender Dennis Kucinich from tonight's MSNBC Democrats' debate. But the TV network's own appeal to the court reveals that its managers changed the program's qualification rules—a move that threw Kucinich off the program.

An NBC Emergency Petition's "statement of facts" filed today admits that Kucinich may have qualified for the debate under the rules outlined by Democratic party consultant Jenny Backus. Those guidelines said that a candidate had to finish in at least fourth place in the New Hampshire primary or Iowa Caucus to participate in the January 15th debate.

A candidate could also qualify by being included "in the top four in one of six credible random-sample telephone national news media polls conducted since the Iowa Caucus."

NBC's statement acknowledges that in a Gallup Poll completed soon after the Iowa Caucus, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama received the support of 33 percent of those polled, John Edwards obtained 20%, and Kucinich won 3%. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson picked up only 1% of those surveyed.

NBC notes that "The poll had a margin of sampling error of +/- three (3) percentage points, thereby making it unclear as to whether Mr. Kucinich or Mr. Richardson finished fourth in the subject poll." Despite this, NBC's statement says that on January 9th, Backus emailed the Kucinich campaign, inviting the Ohio Congressmember to join the debate. A day later, Bill Richardson quit the race.

The next day, January 10th, NBC Political Director Chuck Todd rescinded the networks' invitation. He explained that under NBC's "revised debate criteria, Mr. Kucinich no longer qualified thereunder."

"The revised criteria required that invited candidates must have finished first, second or third in either the Iowa Caucus or the New Hampshire Primary," NBC's petition says.

"The revised criteria governing the January 15th debate are viewpoint neutral," it concludes, "and are in no way designed to exclude an particular candidate based on his or her views. Instead, the revised criteria represent a good faith editorial choice of a privately-owned cable network to limit debate participants based on the status of their campaigns."

NBC's comments do not explain why the media company changed the debates' admission rules five days before the scheduled event. Kucinich claimed that the move represented a breach of contract, an argument that the Nevada Supreme Court rejected.

Read NBC's petition here.