USA: Christian-Owned Spa Cannot Discriminate Against Trans Women, Federal Appeals Court Rules

The court agreed that refusing service to trans women who had not had bottom surgery was unlawful under Washington State’s non-discrimination law.

By Samantha Riedel

June 16, 2025

A federal appeals court has ruled that a Christian-owned Washington spa’s practice of denying service to transgender women violated the Washington Law Against Discrimination (WLAD).

In a decision filed May 25, a three-member panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Washington State Human Rights Commission (HRC) was justified in enforcing the WLAD against Olympus Spa, a Korean spa owned by Christians. The spa was required to amend their policy and ensure equal access regardless of gender identity as part of a 2021 settlement, but filed a complaint against the HRC in 2022, arguing that allowing trans women who have not had bottom surgery to receive nude spa services alongside cisgender women violated their First Amendment rights to freedom of religion, free expression, and freedom of association. But in a 2-1 decision last month, the panel sided with the state, upholding a district court’s decision to dismiss the spa’s complaint.

The court’s opinion, written by Judge M. Margaret McKeown, a Clinton appointee, dismissed notions that the spa’s First Amendment rights had been violated when it was forced to amend its policy. The spa’s original policy allowing only “biological” women, McKeown wrote, violated the plain text of the WLAD, which bars discrimination based on “sexual orientation” — a term that also includes “gender expression or identity” under state law.

“The statutory language is undoubtedly expansive, and its definition of sexual orientation is bespoke,” McKeown wrote in her opinion. “But it is also unambiguous, and it applies to the Spa’s entrance policy.” The HRC did not compel Olympus’ owners to adopt different religious views, McKeown found, but generally required the spa to change its practice of refusing service to trans women without bottom surgery, because it “was unlawful under WLAD.”

McKeown also rejected the spa’s claim that it was legally an “intimate” and “expressive” institution, opining that their First Amendment arguments “would stretch the freedom of association beyond all existing bounds.” Although the spa’s owners “may have other avenues to challenge the enforcement action […] that relief cannot come from the First Amendment,” McKeown went on.

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In his dissent, Judge Kenneth K. Lee claimed that the majority “ignores [WLAD’s] statutory structure and context” and that McKeown’s interpretation “defies common sense.” Lee, who was appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term in office, went on to accuse the HRC of “wield[ing] its power” against an immigrant-owned business “to advance its own political agenda” — specifically, the HRC’s public opposition to Trump’s anti-diversity executive orders. (Lee’s own comments about LGBTQ+ people caused a stir when Trump nominated him in 2019, particularly a Cornell Review article in which Lee claimed that “homosexuals generally are more promiscuous than heterosexuals” and that “one has to only abstain from drug-use and promiscuity” to avoid contracting HIV. Lee later said he regretted writing the article.)

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The case now returns to the district court to issue a final ruling.

Olympus Spa was represented in the case by attorneys from the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), categorized as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and which received $159,000 in Paycheck Protection Plan loans from the first Trump administration in 2020. PJI chief counsel Kevin Snider told the Seattle Times in an emailed statement that the organization plans to ask the full Ninth Circuit to review the decision; PJI previously stated that they plan to take the case to the Supreme Court.

Olympus’ case stems from a 2020 complaint by a trans woman, Haven Wilvich, who said in an HRC filing that she was denied service at the spa because she had not had bottom surgery. Wilvich has not publicly commented on the court’s decision last month; in 2023, following coverage of Olympus’ lawsuit by right-wing media outlets, Wilvich told The Stranger she received numerous death threats and messages telling her to kill herself, and locked down her online presence to avoid being doxxed.

“It shouldn’t be the case that in order to make a complaint of human rights violations and a violation of Washington state law that you have to be publicly named in searchable documents,” Wilvich said at the time.

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Samantha Riedel is a writer and editor whose work on transgender culture and politics has previously appeared in VICE, Bitch Magazine, and The Establishment. She lives in Massachusetts, where she is presently at work on her first manuscript. … Read More