A Trump-appointed judge to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit wrote in vulgar terms about trans women in a dissent regarding a case about discrimination in a Korean spa in Washington State, spurring a rebuke from dozens of fellow judges.

Donald Trump has specifically wanted to de-woke-ify the Ninth Circuit in making judicial appointments, both in his last term and in this one. And one of those appointees, Judge Lawrence VanDyke, was clearly trying to curry favor with Trump and his fellow right-wing judges in penning a particularly offensive dissent in a case in which a three-judge panel of the appeals court was denying an en banc appeal by the larger court.

The Ninth Circuit earlier ruled against the plaintiffs in the case, the owners of a women-only, self-described Christian Korean spa in Washington called Olympus Spa. The court ruled that the spa must admit trans women, regardless of whether they have undergone gender reassignment surgery, saying that it did not violate the spa owners religious freedom to do so.

In denying the petition for a en banc re-hearing of the case, which may precede an appeal to the Supreme Court, two judges agreed, and Judge VanDyke issued a dissent that other judges on the court are calling "juvenile."

VanDyke said his colleagues had "lost their collective minds," and wrote, "This is a case about swinging dicks. The Christian owners of Olympus Spa — a traditional Korean, women-only, nude spa — understandably don’t want them in their spa."

Judge VanDyke added, "Their female employees and female clients don’t want them in their spa either. But Washington State insists on them. And now so does the Ninth Circuit." And, he said, "Woke regulators and complicit judges seem entirely willing, even eager, to ignore the consequences that their Frankenstein social experiments impose on real women and young girls."

VanDyke, who has previously been rebuked by fellow judges — and who was confirmed by the Senate along party lines in 2019, despite a recommendation from the American Bar Association that he was "unfit" for the federal bench — seems to enjoy calling attention to himself in a less-than-collegial manner.

He previously included a video of himself with a March 2025 dissent in a gun rights case, showing him, in a judge's robe in his chambers, handling and loading several handguns.

27 of the Ninth Circuit's 51 judges joined in cosigning a letter of rebuke to Judge VanDyke this week, saying that the language of his disssent "makes us sound like juveniles, not judges, and it undermines public trust in the courts." They added, "Neither the parties nor the panel dissent found it necessary to invoke such crude and vitriolic language. Decorum and collegiality demand more."

VanDyke, who the ABA also said "lacks humility," responded to his colleagues' rebuke saying they "appear to have the fastidious sensibilities of a Victorian nun."

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