HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo should be immune from a lawsuit filed in Connecticut over the 1997 killings of 45 people in a Mexican village, the U.S. State Department said in a court filing.

Zedillo, who is now an international studies professor at Yale University, had argued that his status as a former national leader gave him immunity from the lawsuit. He has denied the allegations that he bears responsibility for the massacre by paramilitary groups in Acteal, in the southern state of Chiapas.