The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit agreed Monday to allow an unusual school discrimination lawsuit to go forward—but not without a fight.

“This strange case seeks a declaratory judgment that Mississippi’s 1868 Constitution, which satisfied the terms of the post-Civil War Readmission Act of Congress, granted more educational rights to African-American children than an amendment to the state’s Constitution in 1987,” Judge Edith Jones said in a rare dissent from the denial of a rehearing en banc.