What was not previously known in the LGBTQ disputes is that the justices voted first to affirm a lower court ruling that had favored a gay man fired from his job as a skydiving instructor in New York and to reverse a lower court decision against a gay man removed from his post as a county child-services coordinator in Georgia.

But, according to the new details learned by CNN, when it came to the case involving a transgender woman, Aimee Stephens, who had challenged her firing at a Michigan funeral home, the justices were torn as they discussed the issue.

Some justices thought sexual orientation and gender identity cases would most definitely be treated the same under the law. But others wondered about differences with the claims and even whether the Stephens case might be returned to a lower court for further hearings, essentially punting on the question of transgender rights.

But once Roberts assigned the cases to Gorsuch and he, as expected, zeroed in on the text of Title VII’s ban on discrimination “because of … sex,” the majority readily signed on to the opinion declaring that both sexual orientation and gender identity would be covered.