A court of appeal in San Francisco has said a California law labelling the killing of Armenians "genocide" does not conflict with US foreign policy.
Turkish officials have stated that they are closely following developments after a US federal appeals court on Friday reversed its own decision and now says the heirs of Armenians killed in the Turkish Ottoman Empire can seek payment from companies that sold their relatives life insurance.
The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said a California law labelling the killings “genocide” does not conflict with US foreign policy, which the court said is unsettled on the issue.
The ruling was 2-1, the same vote the same judicial panel came to last year when it struck down the California law empowering the heirs to sue companies that sold life insurance policies to Armenians killed in Ottoman-era Turkey during World War I. At the current stage, the case is not directly related with the Turkish government, the Anatolia news agency reported, citing diplomatic sources.
However, since the case refers to US policy regarding the issue, any change in US policy can also eventually have an impact on the court case, the sources said, noting that they have been closely following the issue.
Last year, the same panel concluded that the US government had sided with the Turkish government and formally taken a position against labelling the killings genocide. Therefore, that panel concluded, California calling the event genocide conflicted with US foreign policy, making the state law invalid. But in a rare and stunning move on Friday, Judge Dorothy Nelson changed her mind and sided with Judge Harry Pregerson, which turned his 2009 dissenting opinion into law.Judge David Thompson, who wrote the now-overturned majority opinion last year, said in dissent that former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush opposed congressional resolutions that would have recognized an Armenian genocide. Thompson said those presidential efforts show the United States has a clear foreign policy against recognizing the deaths as genocide.
The majority opinion on Friday called those efforts “informal presidential communications” and not official policy. The court said the insurance companies can file a request for a rehearing. The companies could also ask the US Supreme Court to consider the case.
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