Trial began Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina in former federal public defender Caryn Strickland’s closely watched sexual harassment case against the judiciary, with the government arguing that the discrimination alleged by Strickland was, in reality, an “ordinary work dispute.”

U.S. Department of Justice attorneys representing the judiciary zeroed in on one particular email that Strickland’s supervisor, who she accused of harassment, sent to her with the subject line “mas dinero” and in which he said he “deal[s] in pay-for-stay.”