A federal judge described a man’s bid to gain entry to a women-only nude spa as a case about “swinging dicks” in his Thursday dissent.
Ninth Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, a Trump appointee, chided his colleagues for being more disturbed by his word choice than their own decision to force a Christian-owned, traditional Korean spa to welcome a man under Washington’s anti-discrimination law.
“You may think that swinging dicks shouldn’t appear in a judicial opinion,” VanDyke wrote. “You’re not wrong. But as much as you might understandably be shocked and displeased to merely encounter that phrase in this opinion, I hope we all can agree that it is far more jarring for the unsuspecting and exposed women at Olympus Spa— some as young as thirteen—to be visually assaulted by the real thing.”
In 2020, a man filed a complaint with Washington’s Human Rights Commission after Olympus Spa declined to offer him services due to a policy that “transgender women without surgery are not welcome because it could make other customers and staff uncomfortable.”
The Ninth Circuit upheld a decision finding the spa cannot refuse service to clients with male genitalia under the state’s anti-discrimination law, noting the statute does not “impermissibly burden the Spa’s First Amendment rights to free speech, free exercise, or free association.”
VanDyke accused the “woke judges” on the court of “selective outrage” over his language, explaining, “‘dignified and civil’ words are employed to mask a legal abomination.”
“Or, to put it in vernacular perhaps more palatable to my colleagues’ Victorian sensibilities: ‘In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt, / But, being seasoned with a gracious voice, / Obscures the show of evil?” VanDyke wrote, citing Shakespeare.
“The panel majority uses slick legal arguments and deflection to studiously avoid eye contact with the actual and horrific consequences of its erroneous opinion,” he wrote. “The ‘ordinary Americans’ affected by the majority’s opinion don’t have that luxury. Squirm as we might, I think it’s only fair for our court to have a small taste of its own medicine.”
In March 2025, some of Van Dyke’s colleagues also bristled when he published a video dissent to demonstrate their position in a Second Amendment case was “factual fantasy.” Using personal shooting equipment, VanDyke recorded himself giving a firearms demo in his chambers, explaining that “even a caveman with just a video recorder and a firearm” could show the majority’s error.
VanDyke was among 20 potential Supreme Court nominees President Donald Trump included in a September 2020 list.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].
