The gay and transgender workers behind a trio of U.S. Supreme Court cases asking whether federal law shields LGBTQ workers from job discrimination filed their opening briefs Wednesday, arguing that Title VII’s ban on gender-based bias covers them.

The combined appeals raise two questions that have split the federal judiciary: Whether bias based on a worker’s sexual orientation violates Title VII’s ban on discrimination “because of … sex,” and whether this ban blocks bias against transgender people either because they are transgender or because discriminating on the basis of gender identity is illegal sex stereotyping under U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

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Zarda is represented by Gregory Antollino of Antollino PLLC, Ria Tabacco Mar, David Cole and James Esseks of the ACLU Foundation, Jeffrey Fisher, Brian Fletcher and Pamela Karlan of the Stanford Law School Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, Stephen Bergstein of Bergstein & Ullrich LLP, and Erin Beth Harrist, Robert Hodgson and Christopher Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union Foundation.