A Justice Department attorney told a panel of federal judges on Tuesday that a 1964 civil rights law doesn’t protect gay workers from discrimination. A lawyer for an autonomous federal agency disagreed.

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An attorney for the US Department of Justice stood before 13 federal judges in Manhattan on Tuesday to deliver the Trump administration’s hardline argument that a 1964 civil rights law doesn’t protect gay workers from discrimination — and in doing so, pitted himself against a top lawyer for another federal agency who was there to advocate on behalf of a gay worker.

“It’s a little awkward for us to have the federal government on both sides of this case,” said Judge Rosemary Pooler of the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals. “Indeed, your honor,” conceded Jeremy Horowitz, counsel for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), an independent agency that enforces civil rights law in workplaces. The discord — and the awkwardness on display — stems from the Trump administration taking a turn away from the Obama administration’s LGBT-friendly trajectory. That has put lawyers under US Attorney General Jeff Sessions at direct odds with more autonomous corners of the federal bureaucracy. The judges on Tuesday, in a hearing of the full 2nd Circuit, wanted to know if the two agencies had even consulted each other before filing opposing briefs. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to speak to internal deliberations and processes,” Hashim Mooppan, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Civil Division, told the judges. “The EEOC had the authority to file the brief they filed,” he continued. “And the DOJ has authority to file the brief it filed.” Mooppan spoke on behalf of the United States government as a whole, arguing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination on the basis of sex, does not cover sexual orientation.

The argument rebuffs a skydiving instructor named Donald Zarda, who claimed in 2010 he was fired for being gay in violation of Title VII. But while the lawsuit started as a low-profile workplace dispute — and Zarda has since died in a base-jumping accident — the case has snowballed to have potential national impact.

“It’s a little awkward for us to have the federal government on both sides of this case,” said Judge Rosemary Pooler.