A multibillion dollar case turned into a gay legal rights imbroglio after a jury member has been allegedly removed from the panel due to his sexual orientation, Yahoo! reported Wednesday.

An antitrust issue between two giant pharmaceutical companies has shifted into a different course focusing on gay legal rights after a potential juror has been taken off case by lawyers because of his sexual orientation.

Reports stated that the case brought before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, primarily questioned Abbott Laboratories' move to increase its vital AIDS drug Norvir's price by 400 percent in 2007. The case brought by competitor SmithKlineBeecham centered on the antitrust laws allegedly broken by Abbott, but a different problem caught the attention of the public after Abbott's lawyers allegedly removed a juror because he was gay.

The said incident angered the gay community and the advocates of the third gender. SmithKlineBeecham claimed that the gesture was intended to harm the launching of its new AIDS treatment, which uses Norvir, adding that ""Juror B" was taken off because of his sexual orientation.

"It's a big deal," University of California, Davis professor Vik Amar said. "The headlines from this case are going to be about antitrust law - it will be about sexual orientation in the jury pool."

According to Yahoo! before trials ensue, lawyers are given the privilege of using "preemptory challenges" to remove a juror from the pool without legal justification.

Meanwhile, Abbott argued that "Juror B" was withdrawn for three reasons and none of which pertain to his sexual orientation.

Abbott lawyers clarified that the juror's impartiality was compromised due to the fact that he was the only jury member who has knowledge on the SmithKline treatment in question. Another thing they pointed out was the juror lost a friend to AIDS, and finally because he has worked for courts in the past.

In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited lawyers to use the challenges against a potential juror because of race. The court added gender in the prohibition eight years later.

However, the high court has never mentioned about sexual orientation in the prohibition. Although the California Supreme Court has hindered the removal of gays from jury pools since 2000, it's rulings have not been bound on federal courts.

SmithKline is being supported by gay rights activists Lambda Legal and other interest groups, who filed their own legal argument persuading the court to protect homosexuals from being taken off from juries for no apparent reason.

"The discrimination at issue here is particularly harmful, because it reinforces historical invidious discrimination within the court system and undermines the integrity of the judicial system," Lambda addressed to the court.