A federal judge in Manhattan has denied the Justice Department’s little-explained effort to swap out the attorneys representing the government in a lawsuit over the Trump administration’s plans to put a citizenship question on the 2020 US Census.

Judge Jesse Furman, who ruled in January to block the effort to include the question on the census, issued a ruling on Tuesday calling the government’s request to swap out nine attorneys working on the case with new lawyers from the department’s Civil Division “patently deficient.

“Defendants provide no reasons, let alone ‘satisfactory reasons,’ for the substitution of counsel,” Furman said.

Justice Department attorneys working on the case reportedly pushed to get off the assignment, citing frustration with how the case was handled, the Washington Post reports. The department declined to comment.

Furman also said in a footnote in the ruling that this is not the first time that Justice Department lawyers have made moves to leave the case — last year, he said, attorneys from the US Attorney’s office in Manhattan withdrew from the case.

Earlier this month, the US Supreme Court ruled in that the Commerce Department cannot add the question to the census, but President Donald Trump subsequently announced that he would consider adding the question via executive order and also pushed for the Justice Department to keep fighting the case.