This is a follow-up to this question.
Here is an exemple of the code I wrote to add a light gray background to important equations:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[fleqn]{amsmath}
% \usepackage[frenchb]{babel}
% Coloured background
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{mdframed}
\newmdenv[backgroundcolor=black!3!white,
linewidth=0pt,
innerleftmargin=0pt,
innerrightmargin=0pt,
innertopmargin=0.2\baselineskip,
innerbottommargin=0.2\baselineskip]{graybck}
\newcommand{\highlighteq}[1]{#1}
\newenvironment{highlighteqenv}{%
\noindent
\vspace{0.2\baselineskip}
\begin{graybck}
}
{\end{graybck}}
\begin{document}
He said : ` you must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance' which more or less amounted to
\begin{highlighteqenv}
\begin{equation}
\frac{\partial \langle \alpha K \rangle}{\partial t} + \frac{\partial \lambda}{\partial z} =0
\end{equation}
\end{highlighteqenv}
\end{document}
Quite strangely, it produces a wrong spacing before the equation, as displayed on the following picture:

Removing either the fleqn option of amsmath of the loading of
babel with the frenchb option solves the problem :

I would expect frencb to cause such issue with
something regarding paragraph indentation but why does it interact
with fleqn?
Do you have any idea to prevent this additional space from appearing while keeping these two options?