Azbarez | 09-23-2009

“Congressman Adam Schiff, a Congressional Leader on Armenian issues and co-author of the California State law allowing family members of Armenian Genocide victims to request payment on the life-insurance policies of relatives, late yesterday filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in support of a petition for a rehearing before the entire Ninth Circuit Court.

In late August, a three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit struck down the California state law which allowed the insurance claims, claiming the state law was pre-empted by federal policy.

In the brief, Rep. Schiff argues that the federal government has never discouraged states from recognizing the Armenian Genocide or acted to pre-empt state efforts to allow insurance claims to go forward.  Schiff also pointed out that the state law contains a “severability” clause, meaning any reference held to be invalid can be severed from the rest of the law.

‘It would be a tragically unjust result – not to mention one unsupported by law — for this court to deny relief to the victims of these atrocities because of the use of an historically accepted term that, however proper, could be severed from the statute by its own terms,’ said Schiff.   ‘Nothing in law or equity compels such an injurious result.’ “