Lawyers in a transgender sports case claims judge is biased, wants him dismissed

A judge who openly showed bias toward men who pretend to be women — refusing to let them be called “men” in his courtroom, even though an entire case rests on their biological gender — is being asked to recuse himself from the high-profile case about school athletics.

The Title IX case was launched by three female high school athletes against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) over a policy of letting athletes compete in sports based on their own desired gender identity, not their biological sex.

After males pretending to be female began competing in women’s track events in the state, the three athletes said they were unlawfully discriminated against. As in many places, the male participants in female sports easily beat their female competition.

In an April 16 conference call, district court judge Robert Chatigny ordered lawyers for Alliance Defending Freedom — the group representing the female athletes — to refer to the males pretending to be female as “transgender females,” rather than as “males,” the National Review reported on May 11.

“Referring to these individuals as ‘transgender females’ is consistent with science, common practice and perhaps human decency,” the judge said, adding that that referring to the biologically male athletes accurately as “males” is “not accurate” and  “needlessly provocative.” 

When an ADF attorney responded on the call that by using the word “males,” they were simply acknowledging human “physiology,” which is a key point in the entire case, the judge said that terminology was “unfortunate.”

If the attorneys persisted in using the word, he warned ominously, “maybe we’ll need to do something.”

National Review reported Monday that ADF attorneys filed a motion for Chatigyny to recuse himself on May 9, calling his order “legally unprecedented” and saying it showed his inability to hear the case with impartiality.