A national court in France has ruled that a man who fathered a child with his wife six years ago cannot now be listed as the child’s mother.

The French news agency RFI reported that “Claire,” the biological father had children in 2000 and 2004 with his wife. Then in 2011, Claire was registered as a female.

“Three years later, while she still had male reproductive organs, the couple had a third child, a girl,” the report said.

But the highest court in France, the Court of Cassation in Paris, concluded “two maternal filiations cannot be established with regard to the same child, outside of adoption.”

Leaders of gay rights groups said the ruling is a setback for their movement. But another lawyer, Anne-Marie Le Pourhiet, explained that to decide any other way would be to “to transform that child’s personal history into fiction, in the name of adult desire.”

In a similar case in England earlier this year a court ruled a woman who lives as a man cannot be recorded as the father of her child’s birth certificate, but for a different reason: those who give birth are mothers, the court ruling said.