While this case will ultimately be decided by the courts, it’s a sign of conflict ahead in the long-brewing battle over LGBT rights and the meaning of sex discrimination. It also shows the limits of executive action in contested areas of law. The Obama administration may have believed gay people should be protected by federal civil-rights statutes, but it may prove challenging to make that interpretation stick now that a new party controls Washington.

In 2010, a skydiving instructor named Donald Zarda lost his job with Altitude Express, Inc., after he told a client about his sexual orientation. As a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit noted in its ruling on the case this spring, “Zarda often informed female clients of his sexual orientation—especially when they were accompanied by a husband or boyfriend—in order to mitigate any awkwardness that might arise from the fact that he was strapped tightly to the woman.” Zarda sued, arguing in part that Altitude Express violated Title VII by firing Zarda based on his sexual orientation. He lost in district court and on initial appeal. Now, the case is being heard by the full Second Circuit.

Enter the battling briefs. In June, the EEOC weighed in supporting Zarda, arguing that sexual-orientation-based discrimination is by definition based on sex and involves sex stereotyping, which has long been prohibited by the Supreme Court. A month later, the DOJ filed a brief making the exact opposite argument. “The sole question here is whether, as a matter of law, Title VII reaches sexual-orientation discrimination,” the department wrote. “It does not, as has been settled for decades. Any efforts to amend Title VII’s scope should be directed to Congress rather than the courts.”

In other words, the government has two opposing opinions on one case, and two opposite interpretations of how the same law should be applied. “It is super wacky, yes,” said Justin Levitt, an associate dean and professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angles. “It is very unusual. The federal government usually makes great efforts to be on the same page of this sort of thing.”

Neither the DOJ nor the EEOC is a party in the case—both agencies were essentially offering advice to the court on what to do. That’s part of what makes the battling briefs significant: The DOJ chose to take up this fight when it didn’t have to.

“This Justice Department felt strongly enough that they took the affirmative step to weigh in to undercut the EEOC’s position,” said Vanita Gupta, the president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “That likely required a high degree of vetting at a very high level in the Justice Department.” Gupta led the Justice Department’s civil-rights division during the final years of the Obama administration.

The sex-discrimination provision of federal civil-rights laws has always been controversial, but it has become even more charged in recent years. Cases on this topic regularly bubble up through the court system, and some have made it to the top: This spring, the Supreme Court planned to take up a high-profile case concerning a transgender student in Virginia, but punted when the Trump administration back-pedaled the Obama administration’s previous guidance on how to deal with this kind of issue in schools. Court battles over how to interpret “sex discrimination” have become a proxy war over LGBT rights.