A Ninth Circuit fight over a women-only nude spa has exposed how far the courts will go to treat biological boundaries as “discrimination”—and even judges are now publicly feuding over how to describe it.
Quick Take
- The Ninth Circuit let stand Washington state enforcement against Olympus Spa’s women-only policy that excluded preoperative transgender women.
- Judge Lawrence VanDyke, a Trump appointee, used the phrase “swinging dicks” in a dissent from the court’s refusal to rehear the case en banc, arguing the ruling forces male genital presence into female-only spaces.
- Senior Judge M. Margaret McKeown and a large bloc of Ninth Circuit judges issued a rare public rebuke, calling the language “vulgar.”
- Olympus Spa says it is taking the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court, elevating the clash between privacy, religious liberty, and state anti-discrimination power.
How a Women-Only Spa Became a Federal Flashpoint
Washington state officials, through the Washington Human Rights Commission, moved against Olympus Spa after the business maintained a women-only nude spa policy rooted in biology, culture, and religious belief. The policy reportedly excluded preoperative transgender women—meaning individuals who are biologically male and still have male genitalia—while allowing entry after vaginoplasty. The dispute landed in federal court, where the state relied on the Washington Law Against Discrimination to demand the policy change.
U.S. District Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein ruled against Olympus Spa in 2023, rejecting the spa’s constitutional defenses and upholding the enforcement action while giving the spa time to amend its complaint. A divided Ninth Circuit panel later upheld the district court’s approach. The case now sits at the intersection of two competing principles: government pressure to open intimate female spaces to male-bodied individuals, and the longstanding expectation that women can claim privacy and bodily modesty in sex-separated settings.
The Ninth Circuit’s En Banc Denial Sparked the Public Blowup
In early March 2026, the Ninth Circuit declined to rehear the Olympus Spa dispute en banc, leaving the panel decision intact. Judge Lawrence VanDyke wrote a dissent from that denial that went viral after he used explicit phrasing to describe what the spa’s patrons objected to seeing in a nude women’s facility. VanDyke argued the shock of his wording was proportional to the underlying reality at stake—female-only nudity and privacy—rather than an abstract policy debate.
Judge M. Margaret McKeown responded with an unusually pointed statement, joined by a large group of Ninth Circuit colleagues, condemning the dissent’s language as degrading and unbecoming of the judiciary. Reports varied slightly on the count of judges joining the rebuke, but it was roughly in the high twenties—an extraordinary display of internal court politics. The message from McKeown’s bloc focused on decorum and institutional trust, not a concession that the policy question is simple or settled.
Statutory and Constitutional Questions the Court Did Not Quiet
Even within the Ninth Circuit, legal disagreements went beyond tone. Trump-appointed Judge Kenneth K. Lee dissented on statutory grounds, disputing whether the Washington Law Against Discrimination, as written, clearly covers “transgender status.” Olympus Spa also raised First Amendment-based claims, including religious liberty and compelled speech arguments, which lower courts rejected. For constitutional conservatives, that pattern matters: when government compels a private business to redefine sex in the most intimate setting, the state is not merely regulating commerce—it is enforcing ideology.
Why This Case Resonates With Parents and Privacy Advocates
The spa controversy is not about name-calling; it is about whether women and girls must accept male anatomy in spaces historically reserved for females—locker rooms, showers, and nude facilities—because officials insist biology is irrelevant. The dissent highlighted that patrons could include minors, intensifying the common-sense concern many families already have. The record available in the provided sources does not resolve every factual dispute about what specific patrons experienced, but it does establish the legal conflict is real and escalating.
Supreme Court Appeal Raises Stakes for Religious Liberty and Limited Government
Olympus Spa has announced plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case, turning a regional dispute into a national test of how far anti-discrimination law can reach into sex-separated privacy. The Ninth Circuit’s internal spat also underscores the court’s ideological divide and the difficulty of getting clarity from a bench that often splits sharply in high-profile culture cases. If the Supreme Court takes the petition, the justices could address not only state power, but also whether “sex” can be redefined by regulators without violating basic rights.
Ninth Circuit Judges Engage in a Public Spat Over ‘Swinging’ Body Partshttps://t.co/fvtkroVoG0
— PJ Media (@PJMedia_com) March 18, 2026
For voters frustrated by the last decade’s institutional drift, the most important takeaway is straightforward: this is what “woke” governance looks like when it reaches the courtroom—coercive rules enforced through civil-rights machinery, with privacy and religious conscience treated as obstacles. The Ninth Circuit’s debate over wording is a sideshow compared to the central issue the Supreme Court may now be asked to answer: in America, do women still have a legally protectable right to female-only spaces?
Sources:
https://lynnwoodtimes.com/2026/03/16/olympus-spa/
https://davidlat.substack.com/p/judge-lawrence-vandyke-lvd-olympus-spa-dissent-swinging-dicks
https://reason.com/volokh/2026/03/12/judge-vandyke-this-is-a-case-about-swinging-dicks/
https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2026/03/12/23-4031.pdf
