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 that could test the outer limits of gender-identity enforcement nationwide.
Alliance Defending Freedom and Pacific Justice Institute filed a cert petition on August 10 urging the justices to take up Olympus Spa v. Armstrong, after the spa lost at every level of the federal courts below. The owners, a Christian family who emigrated from Korea, say Washington's enforcement machinery has put them in an impossible position: abandon their faith and their female clients' privacy, or lose their business.
The case traces back to a single complaint filed in 2020, from someone the petition says had no record of ever visiting the spa. That one filing set off a chain of state action that now threatens a small business built over more than twenty years on a straightforward premise: women and girls bathe separately from men.
Olympus Spa offers traditional Korean spa treatments that include communal nude bathing areas. Because nudity is central to the services, the spa has always admitted only female patrons and hired only female employees. The owners say their Christian convictions prohibit men and women from being unclothed together outside of marriage.
Washington state saw it differently. After the 2020 complaint, officials threatened to prosecute the spa under the state's public accommodations law, insisting that a policy distinguishing patrons by biological sex amounts to discrimination based on gender identity.
The spa sued. A federal district court ruled against it. A three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit sided with Washington and tossed the case. The full 9th Circuit then declined to rehear the matter en banc. At every step, the spa's religious-liberty and privacy arguments lost.
The petition frames the stakes plainly:
"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."
That language comes directly from the filing. It is not subtle, and it is not meant to be. The petition asks the Supreme Court to decide two questions: whether forcing the spa to admit biological males violates the First Amendment's free exercise clause, and whether a policy based on anatomy actually constitutes discrimination "based on gender identity or transgender status."
The case already drew national attention thanks to a blistering dissent from U.S. Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, a Trump appointee, when the full 9th Circuit refused to take the case. VanDyke opened with a line calculated to provoke:
"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 jurists on the bench criticized VanDyke for the language. He anticipated that reaction and addressed it head-on in the same dissent:
"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 was deliberate: the polite abstractions of legal briefs obscure what the policy actually requires in practice. A nude spa is not a restaurant counter or a hotel lobby. The Supreme Court has already begun grappling with transgender policy questions in other contexts, but this case strips away the euphemisms and presents the physical reality.
Kevin Snider, chief counsel at Pacific Justice Institute, framed the case as a direct threat to women's safety and privacy. His public statement did not hold back:
"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."
Snider's argument highlights a tension that gender-identity mandates have created across a range of institutions. Public accommodations laws were designed to prevent businesses from turning away customers based on race, religion, or sex. Applying those same laws to force a nude spa to admit biological males into spaces where women and girls are unclothed is a different proposition entirely, and one the cert petition argues the Constitution does not permit.
Similar conflicts have surfaced in other settings. The YMCA has faced growing pressure to align its policies after the Supreme Court's Title IX ruling, and courts across the country continue to wrestle with where sex-based distinctions end and gender-identity protections begin.
One detail in the petition stands out for its sheer disproportion. Olympus Spa operated for more than two decades under its female-only policy. No enforcement action. No controversy. A small Korean immigrant family running a business rooted in a centuries-old cultural tradition of gender-separated bathing, consistent with their Christian faith.
Then, in 2020, one person, who the petition says never set foot in the spa, filed a complaint. That was enough for Washington state to bring the full weight of its enforcement apparatus down on the business.
The petition describes the state's posture as a deliberate choice to prioritize its views on gender identity over both religious conviction and longstanding cultural practice. Whether the Supreme Court agrees that this rises to a constitutional violation is the question now before the justices.
The broader legal landscape is shifting. Trans athletes recently abandoned a lawsuit challenging New Hampshire's girls' sports ban after the Supreme Court upheld state authority in that arena. The Olympus Spa case pushes the question into even more intimate territory, not a playing field, but a room where women are naked.
The Supreme Court returns to closed-door conferences on September 28 to begin weighing which petitions to accept for its new term, which opens October 5. A decision on whether to hear Olympus Spa v. Armstrong could come as early as this fall.
If the justices grant cert, the case would force a direct confrontation between state gender-identity mandates and the free exercise clause, with the added dimension that the policy at issue involves compelled exposure to nudity. State courts have already shown willingness to override institutional judgment on gender-identity questions, making the need for Supreme Court clarity more pressing.
If the court declines, the 9th Circuit's ruling stands, and a Korean immigrant family that came to America seeking religious freedom will face a choice no government should force: betray your faith or lose your livelihood.
When the state can compel a family business to expose women and girls to biological males in a nude facility, all because of one complaint from someone who never walked through the door, the word "accommodation" has lost any honest meaning.