The Ninth Circuit Is A Finalist For 'Most Clueless' Ruling of the Year

Once the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco, was considered a model court. What happened? A decision to admit men to female-only spas shows how far it has fallen.

Judges M. Margaret McKeown, Ronald M. Gould (Gould’s attendant, who was not identified), and Kenneth K. Lee.

A three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit this week dropped the towel on gender lines in all-female nude spas.

Two all-female spas filed a federal lawsuit in Washington after the state’s Human Rights Commission (HRC) threatened to prosecute them for refusing to grant admission to men.

The traditional services offered by the spas require the women and girls as young as 13 to be nude. The men are described as “preoperative transgender women” who retain their male genitalia. (Incidentally, the vast majority of men who “identify” as women never undergo sex reassignment surgery.)

The HRC said the spas must admit men and the female attendants must provide full-body massages to them.

The spas argued that Washington was requiring them to “renounce” their Christian faith, which does not permit the mixing of nude persons of opposite sex who are not married to one another.

The spas said the HRC policy violates their First Amendment rights to free speech and free exercise of religion or association.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Thursday in a 2-1 ruling dismissed the Korean spas’ lawsuit, with prejudice (meaning it cannot be refiled in respond to the majority’s objections).

In favor were Judges M. Margaret McKeown, 74, a supposed women’s rights advocate, and Ronald M. Gould, 79, a demonstrated trans rights advocate, both appointed by former Democratic President Bill Clinton.