The Trump administration on Wednesday argued that civil rights laws that protect workers from discrimination do not apply to transgender employees.

The assertion from the Department of Justice (DOJ) came in a filing before the Supreme Court, Bloomberg Law reported.

The high court is considering taking a case involving a transgender employee from Detroit who was fired after she revealed to her employer of six years that she was transitioning. Harris Funeral Homes argued that it had a right to fire Amiee Stephens under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in March found that Stephens' firing violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In its filing before the Supreme Court, the DOJ asserted that “the ordinary meaning of 'sex' [in the law] does not refer to gender identity.”

“The Sixth Circuit's opinion … erases all common, ordinary understandings of the term 'sex' in Title VII and expands it to include 'gender identity' and 'transgender' status,” the DOJ brief states. “In doing so, the lower court rewrites Title VII in a way never intended or implemented by Congress in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

The DOJ brief comes days after The New York Times reported on a leaked memo calling on federal agencies to adopt a biological definition of gender which would exclude transgender people in civil rights law.

(Related: Trump proposed rule change would “define transgender out of existence.”)