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John Roberts, President Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court, donated legal work on behalf of gay-rights groups that helped them win a landmark 1996 case before that panel, according to the Los Angeles Times.

While he was a private attorney, Roberts helped prepare the attorneys arguing on the side of gay-rights groups in Romer v. Evans. That decision overturned a Colorado law that struck down all local gay-rights provisions. Justices in the 6-3 majority said the law violated gay Coloradoans’ constitutional right to equal protection.

President Bush nominated a strong conservative, federal appellate judge John Roberts, to replace retiring moderate justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court.

After the announcement July 19, activists on both sides of the nation’s cultural debates agreed that the move signaled Bush’s intent to shift the ideological balance on the nation’s highest court further to the right—possibly for decades.

Catholic groups say they will guard against any attempt to use religious faith to derail the nomination of Judge John Roberts, a mass-going Catholic, to the U.S. Supreme Court.

They pointed to the very Constitution that Roberts would swear to uphold and its prohibition against using any type of “religious test” as a qualification for higher office.