Olympus Spa, et al. v. Andreta Armstrong, Executive Director of the Washington State Human Rights Commission, et al.

Olympus Spa is a Christian, family-run, Korean bathhouse or jjimjilbang. It provides an intimate environment exclusively for women and girls. Its mission is to restore women’s physical and spiritual health through Korean customs that require complete nudity in communal areas and during full-body scrubs administered by female employees. The owners hold the religious conviction that men and women should not be unclothed together unless married to each other. So the Spa admits only female patrons. A male who identifies as a woman sought to use the Spa’s communal area with nude female patrons as young as 13. The owners cited their female-only entrance policy and declined. But the State of Washington said that policy violated its public-accommodation law by excluding based on “gender expression or identity.” A sharply divided Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal of the Spa’s lawsuit, holding the First Amendment did not protect the jjimjilbang from fines and prosecution, presenting two questions:

1. Whether applying Washington’s law to force a Christian, all-female jjimjilbang to admit males violates the Free Exercise Clause under Tandon v. Newsom, 593 U.S. 61 (2021) (per curiam), and Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission, 605 U.S. 238 (2025), or associational freedom under Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640 (2000).

2. Whether a policy that differentiates based on anatomy discriminates “based on gender identity or transgender status.” West Virginia v. B.P.J., 146 S. Ct. 2356, 2378 (2026) (citing United States v. Skrmetti, 605 U.S. 495, 517 (2025)).