A federal judge in Manhattan has denied a request from the U.S. Department of Justice to remove a series of attorneys from litigation over the Trump administration’s efforts to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 U.S. Census.

U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York wrote in a three-page decision that he had to deny a motion for nine attorneys to withdraw from the lawsuit because the federal government hadn’t given a reason for the change.