The Justice Department, at the urging of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, sent a federal hate crimes lawyer to help prosecute a man charged in the murder of a transgender high school student in Iowa, according to court documents and a news report.

It’s an unusual move for Sessions, a staunch conservative who earlier this month began rolling back anti-discrimination protections for the LGBT community and has now dispatched a DOJ lawyer to assist with a case involving the murder of a transgender person.

The decision to send the lawyer was initiated by Sessions, the New York Times reported on Sunday, citing officials. The DOJ usually only assigns lawyers to help local prosecutors when they can provide expertise in certain areas, the report said.

The case involves Kedarie Johnson, a 16-year-old high school student in Burlington, Iowa, who was shot to death in March 2016. Family and friends told local media that Johnson was gay, identified as both male and female, and was known as Kandicee.

“This spring, the attorney general directed Civil Rights Division attorneys to dedicate themselves to proactively investigate a certain set of cases of individuals who were murdered because they were transgender. This is just one example of the attorney general’s commitment to enforcing the laws enacted by Congress and to protecting the civil rights of all individuals,” DOJ spokesman Devin O’Malley said in a statement.

Christopher Perras will assist in the case against Jorge Sanders-Galvez, 22, according to court documents.

Sessions’ directive ​issued Oct. ​6 allows religious objections to override claims of discrimination by people in the LGBT community.

“Except in the narrowest of circumstances, no one should be forced to choose between living out his or her faith and complying with the law,” the attorney general wrote. “To the greatest extent practicable and permitted by law, religious observance and practice should be reasonably accommodated in all government action, including employment, contracting and programming.”

But that​ ​seems to be at odds with comments by Sessions in June when he vowed to prosecute hate crimes “aggressively and appropriately.”

“I know the responsibility that we have, and we have a responsibility to protect people’s freedom, their religious rights, their integrity, their ability to express themselves, to push back against violence and hate crimes that occur in our country,” ​the attorney general told a hate crimes summit in Washington. “So, we’re going to do that, I will assure you, in every way.”

H​e also singled out violence against transgender victims.​

“We have and will continue to enforce hate crime laws aggressively and appropriately where transgendered individuals are victims,” ​Sessions said​.