California's top insurance regulator says he will approve an emergency request from State Farm to raise home insurance rates for roughly a million customers if the company can justify the hike at a public hearing.

California regulators have given State Farm General initial approval for a major home insurance rate hike later this year — but first, they want the insurer to pledge not to drop any more customers en masse.

Under California law, insurance companies that request rate increases of 7% or more must go through a rate hearing if there are objections by intervenors, as there are in the case of State Farm’s requests. Rate hearings are rare; the last one was in 2015 and also involved State Farm.