A number of Georgia lawyers joined others across the country in heralding Monday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling extending workplace discrimination protections to the LGBTQ community, even as some conservative attorneys suggested it could cost President Donald Trump his evangelical base.

The 6-3 order quickly spurred debate by lawyers and academics, especially because Trump appointee Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion. Some noted the opinion goes a long way toward eliminating what to date has been a patchwork of state and local laws extending protections to the LBGTQ community. Others said Gorsuch's approach, while focusing on the text of the statute, stung longtime textualists like colleague Samuel Alito, whose dissent called the majority ruling "like a pirate ship flying under a textualist flag."

Atlanta resident Gerald Bostock, the only surviving appellant from three cases that Monday's  opinion addressed, said the litigation that has changed his life "is such a bigger issue than my own personal experiences."