Cannot style active state using sliding door technique

I want to style my primary links as graphic tabs using the sliding door technique but cannot figure out how to style the active tab. I don't see anyway to target the <li> tag for active state styling :(

The active state markup is like this:

<li id="menu-177" class="menu-path-front">
   <a class="active" title="Return to the home page" href="/">News</a>
</li>