It was a junk decision.
A federal judge in Washington issued an hilarious dissent when he slammed his colleagues for forcing a female-only nude spa to serve trans women who still have their penises.
“This is a case about swinging d–ks,” the Trump-appointed US Circuit Court Judge Lawrence VanDyke wrote in his March 12 opinion disagreeing with his colleagues on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Sometimes, it feels like the supposed adults in the room have collectively lost their minds,” VanDyke lamented.
VanDyke’s scathing submission came as the federal appeals court rejected a First Amendment case from Olympus Spa — which is in a years-long court battle after trans activist Haven Wilvich filed a complaint against the business in February 2020.
Wilvich hadn’t had gender reassignment surgery when she called the spa’s Lynnwood location, about 30 minutes outside Seattle, and was told only post-op trans folks were permitted.
She quickly complained of discrimination to the Washington State Human Rights Commission, and the spa has been fighting its case ever since.
In its latest legal salvo, the Korean-spa appealed to the Ninth Circuit, claiming its rights were violated by Washington state law requiring it to serve trans women even if they were still fully-phallic.
The law has been applied in “a perverse way” that puts women and young girls at risk, VanDyke wrote.
“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.
“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,” he continued. “But Washington State insists on them. And now so does the Ninth Circuit.”
“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.’”
In 2021, the state declared the spa’s policy discriminatory. The business complied but sued in 2022 to reverse the decision.
Olympus Spa’s attorney, the commission, and Wilvich did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Additional reporting by Lois Weiss
