A judge has ordered that men with penises who claim to be women must be allowed entry to a spa that has only ever served women.
Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein of the Washington District Court ruled on June 5 that the state’s directive to the Olympus Spa in Washington to provide services to “transgender women” with male genitalia did not violate the constitutional rights of the facility’s owners, employees, or customers.
According to a complaint made by the spa’s Christian owners, it was built on the premise that “a male and a female should not ordinarily be in each other’s presence while in the nude unless married to each other.”
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Who owns Olympus Spa?
Tae Lee is the president of the spa, which has been owned by Myoon Woon Lee for the past 20 years. The purpose of Olympus Spa is to revitalize and rehabilitate its clients’ bodily and spiritual well-being.
“Olympus Spa is a place for women to visit, relax, and focus on all aspects of wellness inside and out. The spa includes a herbal dry sauna, a steam sauna, whirlpools, a meditation room, a tea ceremony class, and more,” as per their bio.
The majority of the spa’s services call for customers to be completely undressed, and all of the staff members that work there are female.
The First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution, which provide freedom of speech and freedom of religion, as well as the Bill of Rights’ protection of free association, are violated by requiring admission of men posing as women, the spa’s owners, employees, and clients said.
The state law, according to Rothstein, “does not discriminate on its face, and it does not by its terms favor a particular religion or the non-exercise of religion.”
That means the legislation endures if it is logically connected to an acceptable governmental goal. According to Rothstein, the law’s stated legitimate goal is to safeguard “the public welfare, health, and peace of the people of this state.”
She said that the Washington Human Rights Commission, which looks into allegations of legal infringement, did not violate the plaintiffs’ rights when it ordered the spa to remove material restricting admission to “biological women” only.
“The compelled speech to which Olympus Spa points is ‘plainly incidental’ to the [law]’s regulation of discriminatory conduct,” Rothstein stated.
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“The compelled speech referred to by Olympus Spa is ‘plainly incidental’ to the [law’s] regulation of discriminatory conduct,” Rothstein wrote.
She cited a United States Supreme Court decision that found Congress “can prohibit employers from discriminating in hiring on the basis of race,” and “that this will require an employer to take down a sign reading ‘White Applicants Only’ hardly means that the law should be analyzed as one regulating the employer’s speech rather than conduct.”
The free association claim also failed because the only constraint placed on patrons was that they are female, which, according to the judgment, falls beyond the scope of freedom of association protection. The spa has 30 days to file an updated complaint, according to the judge.
