A Korean immigrant family that has run a women-only nude spa in Washington state for more than two decades is now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block the state from forcing them to admit biological males, a case one federal judge framed in the bluntest terms imaginable.
Alliance Defending Freedom and Pacific Justice Institute filed a petition for certiorari on August 10 in Olympus Spa v. Armstrong, urging the justices to decide whether Washington's enforcement of its gender identity law against the spa violates the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause. The petition caps a years-long legal fight that began with a single complaint in 2020, filed by someone with no record of ever having visited the spa, and has since cost the owners a string of losses in federal court, the Washington Examiner reported.
Olympus Spa is a traditional Korean spa in Washington state that offers communal bathing in the nude. Its owners, a Christian family who emigrated from Korea, have admitted only female patrons and hired only female employees since the business opened more than twenty years ago. The petition states that nudity is central to the services the spa provides, and that the owners' Christian convictions hold that men and women should not be unclothed together outside of marriage.
Washington state saw it differently. After receiving the 2020 complaint, the state turned its gender identity anti-discrimination law, which treats a person's self-declared gender identity as controlling for public accommodation purposes, against the small business. The state threatened prosecution if the spa continued refusing to admit biological males who identify as women.
The petition lays out the timeline in pointed terms. The spa's female-only policy went unchallenged for two decades. Then a single complaint changed everything.
The cert petition filed by ADF and PJI put it this way:
"Then, in 2020, a single complaint, from a person with no record of ever having visited the Spa, set Washington State's enforcement machinery in motion. Resolving that its views on gender identity must override a centuries-old cultural practice and deep religious conviction, the State turned its enforcement power against a Korean family's small business."
The spa lost at the federal district court level. A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit then sided with Washington and dismissed the case. When the full Ninth Circuit had the chance to reconsider, a step called en banc review, it declined, in what was described as a bitterly divided ruling.
That left the spa owners with one option: the Supreme Court. The petition frames the core legal question in two parts. First, does Washington's enforcement of its gender identity mandate against a religious business violate the Free Exercise Clause? Second, does a policy that draws the line based on anatomy, not identity, actually constitute discrimination "based on gender identity or transgender status" at all?
The broader legal landscape around transgender access policies continues to generate conflict in federal courts. A recent D.C. Circuit ruling overturning a ban on transgender troops illustrated how sharply divided the judiciary remains on these questions.
When the full Ninth Circuit refused to take the case, U.S. Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, a Trump appointee, wrote a dissent that drew national attention for its language. VanDyke opened with a line rarely seen in federal jurisprudence:
"This is a case about swinging d***s. The Christian owners of Olympus Spa, a traditional Korean, women-only, nude spa, understandably don't want them in their spa. Their female employees and female clients don't want them in their spa either. But Washington State insists on them. And now so does the Ninth Circuit."
Fellow judges on the bench criticized VanDyke's language. He defended it. His dissent continued:
"You may think that swinging d***s shouldn't appear in a judicial opinion. You're not wrong. But as much as you might understandably be shocked and displeased to merely encounter that phrase in this opinion, I hope we all can agree that it is far more jarring for the unsuspecting and exposed women at Olympus Spa, some as young as thirteen, to be visually assaulted by the real thing."
VanDyke's point, stripped of the crude phrasing, is straightforward: the court's ruling forces women and girls, including minors, to share nude communal spaces with biological males. The judge argued that the crudity was necessary to convey how the ruling would actually play out in practice.
VanDyke's provocative style has drawn attention beyond this case. Newsmax reported that conservative appellate judges, including VanDyke, have been writing high-profile, ideologically sharp opinions in a competitive environment shaped by a potential Supreme Court vacancy. Justice Samuel Alito, 76, is expected to potentially retire, and Senate Republicans are positioning to confirm a successor before the November midterms.
Washington University law professor Daniel Epps told Just The News that the prospect of a vacancy "significantly changes the incentives for people, and judges in particular, who are trying to position themselves to be nominees." Whether VanDyke's dissent in the Olympus Spa case was written with one eye on the Supreme Court or purely on the merits, the opinion has become one of the most talked-about pieces of judicial writing in the current term.
The cert petition makes the stakes personal. It describes the owners as a family of Christian immigrants who left Korea seeking greater religious liberty. Now, the petition argues, they face a choice between their faith and their livelihood.
From the petition:
"A family of Christian immigrants, who fled Korea hoping for greater religious freedom, now stand to lose their livelihood or the ability to practice their faith because the State of Washington insists on dictating that males who identify as women be admitted into a female-only nude spa."
Kevin Snider, chief counsel for Pacific Justice Institute, framed the issue as one of basic safety and bodily privacy for women and girls. He did not mince words about what Washington's law requires in practice:
"It is an abuse and perversion of the public accommodation laws to give biological males access to the intimate spaces of unconsenting females in a state of full or partial undress. No woman or girl should have to give up her right to bodily privacy and safety to avoid offending a man. That's wrong, and it puts women and girls in harm's way."
The petition also argues that the spa's policy is based on anatomy, not gender identity, a distinction the owners say should matter under the law. Whether a policy that separates people by biological sex amounts to discrimination "based on gender identity" is one of the questions the petition asks the Supreme Court to resolve.
The Supreme Court's upcoming term already includes high-stakes cases on its docket. The justices will begin closed-door conferences on September 28 to decide which new petitions to accept, and the term formally opens October 5. A decision on whether to hear Olympus Spa v. Armstrong could come as early as this fall.
One detail in the petition stands out above the rest. The entire enforcement action, the prosecution threats, the years of federal litigation, the losses at three levels of the judiciary, traces back to a single complaint filed in 2020 by someone who, the petition states, had no record of ever having visited Olympus Spa.
The petition does not identify the complainant or describe the specific allegations. But the implication is clear: Washington mobilized its full enforcement apparatus against a small family business on the basis of a grievance filed by a stranger.
That pattern, state power wielded against private citizens over contested cultural questions, has become a recurring flashpoint. Recent court rulings on firearms and redistricting have generated similar battles over where constitutional rights end and government mandates begin.
No public statements from Washington state officials or the state attorney general's office responding to the cert petition appear in available reporting. The respondent in the case is identified only as "Armstrong"; the individual's full name, title, and agency have not been specified.
The petition describes the spa's policy as one that "protected the privacy of women and girls for more than 20 years." Washington state decided that two decades of practice mattered less than a single complaint. Now nine justices will decide whether the Constitution has anything to say about it.
When a government threatens to shut down a family business because it won't let men undress in front of thirteen-year-old girls, the question isn't complicated, it's whether anyone in authority still has the common sense to say so.
