Former House Speaker Sal DiMasi is ineligible to become a lobbyist not just because of his federal corruption conviction, but because the actions that led to those convictions involved unauthorized lobbying, a commonwealth attorney argued Thursday.

DiMasi, 73, now of Melrose, appeared at a pre-conference hearing Thursday afternoon challenging the state’s decision to block him from lobbying, based on the former House Speaker’s 2011 conviction on federal charges that he steered state contracts to Cognos, a Burlington-based software company, in exchange for kickbacks.

In his appeal, DiMasi argued that the state’s ethics and lobbying reforms disqualified people with state convictions, not federal convictions. Fierro argued the same points Thursday afternoon before the presiding officer, Peter Cassidy.

But government attorney Marissa Soto-Ortiz argued that DiMasi was effectively lobbying to the governor’s office and the Legislature in 2006 and 2007 and failed to submit lobbying registration forms for those years, a violation of state lobbying law.

That argument came as a surprise to DiMasi’s attorney, Meredith Fierro.

“The issues that the lobbyist division outlined are not the issues that we understood to be the subject of this proceeding,” said Fierro, an attorney at Cosgrove, Eisenberg and Kiley in Boston. “What we understood was that Mr. DiMasi received a notice that his application to register as a lobbyist had been rejected.”

The former North End Democrat, who became House speaker in 2004, stepped down in 2009 amid reports of a corruption probe. DiMasi was convicted in 2011 for his role in a scheme total $65,000 in kickbacks to help Cognos, a software company based in Burlington, secure nearly $18 million in state contracts.

He served five years of an eight-year sentence at a federal prison in North Carolina. In November 2016, he was granted compassionate release as he battled multiple forms of cancer, which he survived.

DiMasi’s intentions to become a lobbyist were known for months. He started working with the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance as a consultant in spring of 2018, The Boston Globe reported in January.

He applied to register earlier this year, but the lobbying division denied the request, citing his previous conviction.

On April 22, DiMasi requested a hearing to appeal the decision, arguing that other elected officials with federal convictions were allowed to register and remain registered as lobbyists. Charles F. Flaherty, a former Democratic House member, became a lobbyist after pleading guilty to tax evasion in 1996. Thomas M. Finneran, who was House speaker before DiMasi, pleaded guilty in 2007 to one count of obstruction of justice and went on to work as a lobbyist for more than a decade.

Their initial registrations preceded the 2009 ethics and lobbying reforms, which DiMasi acknowledged were in response to his federal probe.

“Lobbying is a constitutional right,” he wrote in his appeal letter. “Now that I have paid the severe price for my convictions, I want to do what I know best: advocating for the things I believe in.”

Both parties plan to submit briefings over the next couple of months and start oral arguments in September.