A US appeals court has upheld a ruling that blocks schools in the state of Massachusetts from teaching literature that denies the mass killing of Armenians in Turkey in 1915 was a genocide. The ruling came in response to a 2005 lawsuit filed by the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, a US lobbying group. A lower court dismissed the suit in June, and the appeals court upheld that decision on Wednesday.
State curriculum in Massachusetts requires schools to teach a unit about the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and other "recognised human rights violations and genocides."
The appeals court ruled that "law would not allow the genocide denial actions that the plaintiffs sought." Turkish-American groups have lobbied schools to include materials that question whether the 1915 killings were, in fact, a genocide.
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