The Supreme Court is being urged to hear a religious liberty case about a Korean spa in Washington state that wishes to keep its facility female only, in a dispute that made headlines over a judge’s crude description of what the spa owners wanted to avoid women seeing at their establishment.
Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative law firm, and Pacific Justice Institute filed a petition to the high court asking the justices to review a lawsuit against the state of Washington brought by the Olympus Spa, which offers traditional Korean treatments that include communal nude areas and therefore only admits and hires women. After the owners of the spa cited religious beliefs, officials from the Evergreen State threatened to prosecute them over refusing to allow in men, leading to the lawsuit over the alleged violation of the spa owners’ First Amendment religious rights.
