The Arkansas insurance regulator said her department will join with 12 other states to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold a lower court's ruling on the use of credit scores by insurers.

Arkansas Insurance Commissioner Julie Benafield Bowman said on Thursday that Arkansas was joining with the other departments in an amicus curiae (or friend of the court) brief that asks the Supreme Court to uphold a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that GEICO and Safeco willfully violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) by not properly notifying consumers when their credit score negatively affected their auto insurance rates.

According to Ms. Bowman in a statement, the states filed their brief to "further their collective mission of protecting consumers by supporting interpretations of the FCRA that put valuable information in the hands of consumers; provide appropriate incentives for insurance companies that use consumer credit information to adopt procedures that assure compliance with the law, and hold insurance companies accountable when they adopt policies that recklessly disregard consumer rights in contravention of the FCRA."