By John Fritze and Devan Cole, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday revived a challenge by a death row inmate in Oklahoma who claims prosecutors “sex-shamed” her during her trial, referring to her as a “slut puppy” and holding up her thong for the jury.

Brenda Andrew, the only woman on death row in Oklahoma, is facing execution for the 2001 shooting death of her estranged husband. In her appeal to the high court, Andrew said the prosecution’s use of “plainly irrelevant sexual history” violated her due process rights and should invalidate her 2004 murder conviction.

In an unsigned opinion Tuesday, the Supreme Court sent Andrew’s case back to an appeals court to revisit whether the evidence against her was too prejudicial to be used against her.

At the time of her conviction, the Supreme Court “clearly established law provided that the Due Process Clause forbids the introduction of evidence so unduly prejudicial as to render a criminal trial fundamentally unfair.”

Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

“The state invited the jury to convict and condemn Ms. Andrew to die because she was a ‘hoochie,’ was a bad mother and wife, did not cry publicly, and otherwise failed to adhere to feminine stereotypes,” Andrew’s lawyers said.

Her supporters said the state weaponized sex stereotypes at trial, which they say is all too common in the criminal justice system.

The Supreme Court in 2017 ruled for a Black death row inmate who was sentenced after an expert witness testified he was statistically more likely to act violently in the future because of his race. Andrew’s attorneys said a similar tainting took place during their client’s trial, only it was her gender that was targeted, rather than her race.

Oklahoma officials say prosecutors used the evidence to establish motive and to counter Andrew’s defense that she was “was a good mother, who would never go to such lengths as killing the father of her children.” Prosecutors say Andrew and her boyfriend lured her estranged husband, Robert Andrew, into a garage and killed him with two shotgun blasts and then, days later, fled to Mexico.

Brenda Andrew was arrested when she returned to the United States. The thong, prosecutors say, was recovered from her luggage.

Andrew’s co-defendant, James Pavatt, confessed to Robert Andrew’s murder. He is also on death row. But despite the confession, police suspected Andrew helped arrange the shooting and she was charged – and then convicted – with murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

The sex-based evidence that Andrew contests in her Supreme Court appeal, the state said, is “but a drop in the ocean of the state’s evidence” against her.

Andrew also said police whisked her from a hospital bed after the shooting and questioned her without reading her a Miranda warning.

A divided 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the state.

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