California Attorney General Kamala Harris was joined by her counterparts from Hawaii, Massachusetts, Nevada and Rhode Island, supporting the constitutionality of California’s Armenian Genocide Life Insurance Recovery Act and reaffirming an earlier ruling by a 3-member panel of the same court, Asbarez newspaper reports.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said descendants of the Armenian Genocide victims can get payment from the companies selling life insurance to their relatives.

Under the court decision, California law labeling the killings as genocide does not contradict U.S. foreign policy.

The court reversed its last year’s decision when it ruled that the law on insurance claims was unconstitutional.

In the brief imploring the court to uphold the law, the attorneys general argue that “…no treaty, congressional resolution or executive agreement establishes a federal foreign policy that conflicts with or displaces, Section 354.4.”

“The Federal government’s inaction in the face of numerous uses of the term ‘Armenian Genocide’ by California and other states belies any significant federal interest in preventing states from using the term. Some 40 other states have statutes and or proclamations that use that term and ‘the federal government’ has never expressed any opposition to any such recognition,” the newspaper quotes the attorneys.