Descendants of Armenian victims of genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks can sue insurance companies for unpaid claims over the atrocities, in a rare reversal by a federal appeals court.

The same three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said in August 2009 that lawsuits were barred by a federal government policy against legal reference to the Armenian genocide despite laws in California and 41 other states recognizing the massacre of 1.2 million Armenians that began in 1915 amid the chaotic collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Brian S. Kabateck, an attorney for Armenian American heirs said the decision was “extraordinarily unusual” and could open the door to other unsettled issues from the massacre.

Congress has considered resolutions three times in the last decade that would have provided official recognition of the genocide. Each time, the White House stepped in to urge that the bills be scuttled out of fear that passage would damage relations with Turkey, whose government disputes that a genocide took place. Last year, Thompson and Nelson alluded to those thwarted resolutions as constituting a federal policy against reference to genocide.

The new ruling cited contradictions in federal policy regarding references to genocide, including moments of silence held in Congress to remember the Armenian victims and then-Sen. Barack Obama urging voters during his presidential campaign to “recognize the horrific acts carried out against the Armenian people as genocide.”