A Trump-appointed federal judge torched his own colleagues on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals after the court rejected a First Amendment challenge from a traditional Korean women-only spa that has been forced by Washington state to admit biological males who have not undergone surgery.
As the New York Post reports, Judge Lawrence VanDyke did not mince words in his March 12 dissent. The opening line landed like a brick:
"This is a case about swinging d–ks."
That's a sitting federal appellate judge, writing in an official opinion, because apparently nothing less would convey the absurdity of what Washington state and the Ninth Circuit have demanded of a small business and its female clientele.
Olympus Spa, formally Olympus Women's Spa, Inc., operates in Lynnwood, Washington, about 30 minutes outside Seattle. It is a traditional Korean nude spa, owned by Christians, serving exclusively women. The business model depends on that exclusivity. The entire point is that women can be undressed in a space free from male anatomy.
In February 2020, transgender activist Haven Wilvich called the spa's Lynnwood location and was told that only post-op trans individuals were permitted. Wilvich, who had not had gender reassignment surgery, then complained of discrimination to the Washington State Human Rights Commission.
In 2021, the state declared the spa's policy discriminatory. The business complied but sued in 2022 to reverse the decision, raising First Amendment objections to a state law requiring it to serve trans women even if they were, in VanDyke's phrasing, "still fully-phallic."
The Ninth Circuit sided with the state. The spa lost.
VanDyke's opinion reads less like a judicial dissent and more like a man watching an institution abandon common sense in real time. He wrote that the law has been applied in "a perverse way" that puts women and young girls at risk, and he pointed the blame squarely at the regulatory and judicial apparatus that made it happen:
"Woke regulators and complicit judges seem entirely willing, even eager, to ignore the consequences that their Frankenstein social experiments impose on real women and young girls."
He laid out the situation with a clarity his colleagues apparently couldn't manage:
"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."
And then the kicker:
"But Washington State insists on them. And now so does the Ninth Circuit."
Three sentences. Three escalations. A small business, its employees, and its customers all said no. The government said yes anyway.
VanDyke acknowledged that not every bad policy is unconstitutional. He drew the line carefully:
"Yet if harmful and unfortunate consequences were all this case was about, we'd have to shrug and say: 'That's what comes with living in a democracy.' Unless the Constitution is implicated, we get what we voted for 'good and hard.'"
The implication is obvious. VanDyke believes the Constitution is implicated. The Ninth Circuit's majority apparently disagrees, or simply doesn't care to look.
This is the core tension the ruling exposes. The spa's owners aren't asking for the right to discriminate against anyone on a whim. They are asking whether the First Amendment protects a faith-based business whose entire service depends on single-sex nudity from being compelled by the state to expose its female clients to male anatomy. The Ninth Circuit's answer, functionally, is no.
For years, progressives built their cultural authority on the idea that women's spaces are sacred. Women's shelters, women's sports, women's bathrooms. These were supposed to be non-negotiable boundaries born out of safety and dignity.
Now, a women-only nude spa, operated by women, serving women, employing women, cannot maintain the single condition that makes the space what it is. The state of Washington has decided that a biological male's desire to enter a nude female space outweighs every woman already in it.
VanDyke captured the mood of anyone watching this unfold:
"Sometimes, it feels like the supposed adults in the room have collectively lost their minds."
It's worth noting who stayed silent. Olympus Spa's attorney, the Washington State Human Rights Commission, and Wilvich did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment. The people who created this situation had nothing to say about it.
This case is a near-perfect distillation of how gender ideology overrides every other value the left claims to hold. Religious liberty, women's safety, bodily autonomy, consent, the right of female customers to not be exposed to male nudity against their will: all of it evaporates the moment it conflicts with the demands of gender activists.
The progression is predictable by now:
This has happened in sports. It has happened in prisons. It has happened in shelters. Now it has happened in a nude spa, where the stakes are about as literal as they can get.
VanDyke called it a Frankenstein social experiment. He's being generous. Frankenstein's monster was at least an accident. This is deliberate. Every agency that touched this case chose ideology over the plainly obvious interests of the women it claims to protect.
Somewhere in Lynnwood, a small Korean spa that wanted nothing more than to serve its female customers in peace is now compelled by the full weight of Washington state law and the Ninth Circuit to do the opposite. The owners objected. The employees objected. The customers objected. The Constitution, according to the majority, does not.
One judge had the nerve to say what everyone already knew. The rest of the bench looked away.
