September 2026
Washington seeks to enforce “nondiscrimination” law to compel a traditional Korean spa to permit male bodies into female nude spa facilities.
Olympus Spa is a Christian Korean spa in the State of Washington that has provided spa treatments to female patrons from age 13 and older for more than two decades. In accordance with Korean tradition that provides an intimate physical and spiritual experience, Olympus Spa’s services include steam rooms, soaking pools, and full-body scrubs, all provided in open communal spaces where its patrons remain fully nude during the entire spa experience. The owners adhere to Christian beliefs that men and women, unless they are married, should not be exposed to each other’s unclothed bodies. For its entire existence, the spa has admitted only female patrons and hires only female employees. In 2020, a single complaint by a male who said he identified as a female challenged that policy. The state of Washington, citing its law against discrimination, ordered Olympus Spa to open its facilities to all males who identified as female, or close its doors.
Both the district court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Washington has the right to force the Spa to admit men based on Washington’s law that prohibits discrimination based on gender expression or identity.
The Independence Law Center argues in its brief that “the United States of America has always acknowledged rights of intimate bodily privacy” based on biological sex. (p. 3) “Expectations of sex-based intimate privacy are not narrow-minded, prudish, hateful, or superficial. Rather, they are innate, instinctively protective and part of our human experience.” (p. 2).
The Independence Law Center’s brief concludes with this statement:
“The inherent physical differences between the sexes have, since the founding of our country, formed the foundation for the bodily privacy that is part of our ordered liberty as Americans. These biological differences do not disappear upon one’s declaration of an identity that is different than one’s sex. As this Court has stated, these differences are enduring. And because they are enduring, sex-based classification for ensuring bodily privacy in intimate spaces transcends all other subjective classifications, including “identity.” Accordingly, it is essential that this Court preserve this constitutional right and rule that no state can simply legislate these rights away by choosing to cancel classification based on biological reality to accommodate ‘identity.’” (p. 24).
