A judge has ruled that a spa that, for years, has served only women and has a compulsory nudity requirement has to admit so-called “trans women” who are biological men and have male genitalia.
In a ruling on June 5, U.S. District Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein, a Carter appointee, stated that the constitutional rights of the owners, employees, and patrons of Olympus Spa in Washington state were not violated when state officials mandated the facility to offer services to individuals who identify as “transgender women” but have male genitalia, The Epoch Times reported.
According to a complaint filed by the Christian owners of the spa, they described the establishment as being designed based on their belief that “a male and a female should not ordinarily be in each other’s presence while in the nude unless married to each other,” according to their complaint.
The outlet noted: “Many services provided by the spa require patrons to be fully naked, and the employees who work on-site are all female.”
The owners, workers, and patrons of the spa asserted that compelling the admission of men identifying as women infringes upon their constitutional rights to freedom of speech, free exercise of religion, and freedom of association.
But Rothstein cited a state law called Washington’s Law Against Discrimination, ruling that it “does not discriminate on its face, and it does not by its terms favor a particular religion or the non-exercise of religion.”
As such, law survives scrutiny if it is reasonably related to a legitimate governmental objective and purpose, which, as stated in the statute, is to protect “the public welfare, health, and peace of the people of this state.”
The judge also ruled that an order from the Washington Human Rights Commission to the spa instructing the owners to remove their requirement of only admitting “biological women” was not an infringement on their rights.
“The compelled speech to which Olympus Spa points is ‘plainly incidental’ to the [law]’s regulation of discriminatory conduct,” Rothstein said.
Rothstein went on to quote a U.S. Supreme Court ruling: “‘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.’”
How she related racial discrimination to allowing only biological females into a females-only spa is a mystery.
The claim of freedom of association was deemed unsuccessful since the only prerequisite for patrons was that they identify as female, which falls outside the scope of protection based on freedom of association, Rothstein added.
“The Court does not minimize the privacy concerns at play when employees are performing exfoliating massages on nude patrons. Aside from this nudity, though, there is simply nothing private about the relationship between Olympus Spa, its employees, and the random strangers who walk in the door seeking a massage,” she wrote. “Nor is there anything selective about the association at issue beyond Olympus Spa’s ‘biological women’ policy.
“The Court, therefore, has little difficulty concluding that the personal attachments implicated here are too attenuated to qualify for constitutional protection,” she ruled.
