Christian-owned spa turns to Supreme Court after state demands man get access to female-only nude space
A Christian immigrant family is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review a legal battle over whether a man who identifies as a woman can access a communal area at their Korean spa, where female patrons — including girls as young as 13 — are nude.
Attorneys with the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) announced this week that they filed a petition asking the nation’s highest court to review the case involving Olympus Spa, a traditional Korean spa with locations in Lynnwood and Tacoma, Washington.
“A family of Christian immigrants — who fled Korea hoping for greater religious freedom — now stand to lose their livelihood or the ability to practice their faith because the State of Washington insists on dictating that males who identify as women be admitted into a female-only nude spa,” the petition states.
Sun Lee, a first-generation Korean American, operates the Olympus Spa alongside his family. “Lee’s parents opened the spa after fleeing Korea to the United States in the hopes of a better life and greater religious freedom as Christians,” the legal filing states.
The spa is rooted in Korean culture and modeled after jjimjilbang, a bathhouse that typically includes saunas and soaking pools. Olympus Spa also offers seshin, a traditional deep-exfoliation treatment performed nude by a ddemiri, a skin-scrubbing specialist.
Because nudity is central to its services, Olympus Spa maintains a policy barring men with male genitalia from its female-only, nude spaces to protect women’s and girls’ privacy, according to the petition.
In addition to protecting women’s privacy when they are in a state of undress, the Lee family also adheres to the Christian belief that men and women should not be together nude if they are unmarried.
“It is an abuse and perversion of the public accommodation laws to give biological males access to the intimate spaces of unconsenting females in a state of full or partial undress,” PJI Chief Counsel Kevin Snider said in a statement about the case.
“No woman or girl should have to give up her right to bodily privacy and safety to avoid offending a man. That’s wrong, and it puts women and girls in harm’s way,” Snider added.
The legal battle began in 2020 when a man who identifies as a woman filed a complaint with the Washington Human Rights Commission.
The complainant, Haven Wilvich, called the Olympus Spa in January 2020 to ask about admission, according to reports. Staff told Wilvich that men who have not undergone sex-change surgery are not admitted, and he later filed a complaint against the spa.
“Based on a single complaint by a male who may never even have visited the spa, Washington state decided its views on gender identity must override a centuries-old cultural practice and deep religious conviction, turning its enforcement power against a Korean family’s small business,” said ADF Senior Counsel and Vice President of Appellate Advocacy John Bursch.
Following Wilvich’s complaint, the commission charged Olympus Spa with being in “active violation” of the Washington Law Against Discrimination (WLAD). An investigator gave the spa 10 days to change its policies or face referral for prosecution.
The spa then filed a First Amendment challenge, which a divided 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals eventually dismissed. The 9th Circuit entered its judgment in May 2025 and, in March, entered an order amending its opinion and denying a rehearing.
According to the panel majority, the WLAD “imposes only incidental burdens on religious expression.”
The attorneys who filed the petition on Olympus Spa’s behalf are now asking the Supreme Court to intervene.
“It cannot be that Washington can force Christian, Korean business owners to allow nude males to share facilities with nude female patrons as young as 13 and require female employees to provide full-body scrubs to nude men,” the petition argues.
