The judge in the United States women’s soccer team’s gender discrimination lawsuit has set a May 5, 2020 trial date in the case, an accelerated timeline that could see the team’s bid for equal pay become entangled with its preparations for next summer’s Tokyo Olympics.

The date, set on Monday by Judge R. Gary Klausner of United States District Court for the Central District of California, is at least six months earlier than the players and U.S. Soccer, their employer and the defendant in the suit, had requested. Both the players and U.S. Soccer, which runs the national team and pays the salaries and bonuses of its players, had sought to delay the trial until later in the year in order to avoid both the Olympic tournament and the conclusion of the players’ domestic league seasons.

Instead, Judge Klausner set a date that is 11 weeks before the opening match of the Olympic women’s tournament. The United States still has to qualify for the Games, but most believe that is a formality: the squad, the reigning World Cup champion, has reached five of the six Olympic finals and has left with the gold medal four times.

Twenty-eight members of the United States player pool, including all of the team’s best-known active players, are plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit, which was filed in March — only months before the team headed to France to defend the Women’s World Cup championship it had won in 2015. In their suit, the players said they were victims of “institutionalized gender discrimination” that affected everything from their paychecks and working conditions but also the way they traveled to matches and the hotels in which they slept.