For the past three months, a global pandemic has dominated the news cycle. But in doing so, the China Virus also obscured a number of other important events and issues. This included the cancellation of not just the NCAA basketball tournament and Major League Baseball’s Opening Day but college and high-school winter championships and spring sports. In the latter case, we were thus spared further reports of an ongoing saga that threatens to change the very nature of competitive sports: the inclusion of so-called “transgender” athletes (a.k.a. males) competing in girls’ sports.

We introduced you to Selina Soule just over a year ago, shortly after she was bested in a Connecticut high-school competition by two “transgender” male athletes in a race that determined advancement to a regional championship. Her eighth-place finish left her two spots short, with the two boys finishing one-two in the race.

Since then, with the assistance of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), Soule has become the lead plaintiff in a federal case against the Connecticut Association of Schools — a case that already includes some disturbing and frankly biased remarks uttered by the judge, one Robert Chatigny.

According to a transcript of the case obtained by National Review, Chatigny, a senior judge originally appointed by Bill Clinton, advised ADF attorneys, “If you feel strongly that you and your clients have a right to refer to these (transgender) individuals as ‘males’ and that you therefore do not want to comply with my order, then that’s unfortunate. But I’ll give you some time to think about it and you can let me know if it’s a problem. If it is, gosh, maybe we’ll need to do something. I don’t want to bully you, but at the same time, I don’t want you to be bullying anybody else. Maybe you might need to take an application to the Court of Appeals. I don’t know. But I certainly don’t want to put civility at risk in this case.”

Needless to say, ADF attorneys were shocked at this “scolding.” However, they and the judge reached a compromise to call the male runners in question “transgender athletes.” But Chatigny’s remarks suggest an inherent bias in his eventual ruling.

Commentator Matt Walsh wryly observes that the ADF attorneys missed an opportunity during the proceedings, which were handled via conference call. “I wish that the lawyers for the girls had thought to ask the judge to provide a definition of the word ‘female,’” wrote Walsh. “He apparently thinks that a female is someone with XX chromosomes or someone with XY chromosomes. As that pretty much covers the whole gamut of human possibilities, it would seem that the judge actually thinks the word female means nothing at all.”

It would also seem that this courtroom game is rigged, which prompts a number of questions regarding how Title IX will be seen in this new era of 50 shades of gender dysphoria. While several states have adopted stances like that in Connecticut, Idaho recently passed legislation in the opposite direction, protecting girls from having to compete against biological males. Naturally, that state’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act is being challenged in court.

While there are exceptions, there’s a timeless and inarguable reason that most competitive sports separate the sexes: Men are generally bigger and stronger than women. In the same 55-meter girls’ race where Soule finished eighth, the winning male set a state record of 6.95 seconds, with the second-place finisher (also a male) finishing 0.06 seconds behind. The top biological female crossed the line in 7.23 seconds. That may seem like a small margin of victory between the top male and female, but in sprinting terms, it’s a blowout.

Unfortunately, it appears Soule and her co-plaintiffs aren’t just playing catch-up on the track; they’re working at a disadvantage in federal court, too.