03/17/2026
A heads-up on a significant development out of the 9th Circuit that's worth tracking, both for what it means for anti-discrimination law and for what it signals about the current state of the federal judiciary.
On March 13, the full 9th Circuit declined to rehear Olympus Spa v. Armstrong, a case in which the court had affirmed that Washington State's anti-discrimination law — prohibiting exclusion of transgender women from public accommodations — did not violate the spa owners' First Amendment rights. The panel decision was solid and unremarkable.
What made news was the dissent filed by Trump appointee Judge Lawrence VanDyke.
VanDyke's solo dissent was so deliberately inflammatory that it drew written rebukes from 29 of his colleagues — across ideological lines — including some of the court's most conservative members. Twenty-six judges joined Senior Judge M. Margaret McKeown's statement that the dissent's language "makes us sound like juveniles, not judges, and undermines public trust in the courts." Judges Owens and Forrest filed their own one-line statement: "Regarding the dissenting opinion of Judge VanDyke: We are better than this."
For those tracking VanDyke's trajectory: this is not an isolated incident. Last year, he attached a video of himself handling fi****ms in his judicial chambers to a gun-rights dissent. The pattern is hard to ignore — these appear to be calculated performances aimed at a national audience of one.
Why does this matter? A few reasons:
1. Anti-discrimination law is in the crosshairs. The underlying legal theory VanDyke is championing — that religious business owners have a First Amendment right to exclude protected classes from public accommodations — has direct implications for LGBT+ employment discrimination claims under Title VII.
2. Judicial temperament tells you something. Judges who are auditioning for higher office by abandoning collegiality and professional norms are signaling how they'll approach cases involving disfavored groups. That's useful intelligence for litigation strategy.
3. The case will likely be appealed to the Supreme Court. Olympus Spa's attorneys have indicated they intend to petition for certiorari. This could become a significant vehicle for revisiting the intersection of religious liberty and anti-discrimination law.
The full decision is linked in the comments.
Dozens of Ninth Circuit judges rebuked a colleague after he used a crude phrase in a dissent tied to a Seattle spa case.
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