A Korean spa in New Jersey has been ordered to implement “gender identity-friendly” policies and educate staff on “non-discrimination” after being sued for refusing to allow a male into the women’s nude section. The man, Alexandra “Allie” Goebert, first launched the discrimination suit against King Spa in 2022.
King Spa is a wellness facility modeling itself after a jimjilbang, a traditional Korean health center which requires nudity in some areas. For that reason, the nude areas of the spa had been strictly sex-segregated.
As previously reported by Reduxx, the incident involving Goebert first occurred in August of 2022 when he visited the Palisades Park location with a female companion. Upon registration, Goebert was provided wristband granting him access to the men’s locker room instead of the women’s. Goebert immediately complained, telling staff he was a “transgender woman” and was legally recognized as “female” by the state of New Jersey.
After making a phone call, the staff member gave Goebert access to the restricted women’s area. But after entering, Goebert came to the attention of a locker room attendant who quickly called the manager. The manager then began to question whether Goebert had undergone genital surgeries, at one point asking if Goebert still had “boy parts.”
Goebert responded that he did not have “boy parts” because he is a “woman,” implying that he had attempted to argue his penis was not an inherently male anatomy. But the manager continued to press on whether he had undergone any surgical interventions, to which Goebert eventually admitted he was fully intact. The manager then told Goebert he needed to leave the female area of the spa.
After being told to use the men’s side of the spa, Goebert protested and said he would be uncomfortable in the men’s area because he identified as a woman.
The General Manager, Youn Park, attempted to make a concession for Goebert in the form of allowing him to use the women’s area, but only if he wore a bathing suit. Goebert refused, stating he did not have a bathing suit to wear and accused the spa of being in violation of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination. He was offered a refund on his admission and told to leave.
Less than two months later, Goebert, who is a US Army Veteran and law school graduate, filed a complaint against the spa with the state’s Department of Law and Public Safety.
Throughout the course of the proceedings, Goebert’s counsel complained that King Spa “misgendered” him in court filings.
In their position statement, lawyers for King Spa explained that Goebert had previously attended the spa and presented ID with his sex listed as “male,” prompting confusion from staff.
“When the agent, servant, and employee of [the spa] saw that the license indicating female and recognizing that this was the same individual who had utilized the male facilities, the question was posed as to has the front changed,” the position statement read.
“This was an attempt at not being insulting, but deemed a necessity given that there are many other male and female customers who utilize the Spa and do so in the nude. Once this individual indicated that he had not change his front, to wit, that he had male genitalia, the agent, servant, and employee of [the Spa] made a reasonable accommodation. They indicated that the individual could certainly use the facilities, but not in the female nude area. To do otherwise would simply cause havoc and expose all the other nude females to a fundamental invasion of their privacy and certainly expose the [spa] to extensive liability for the same.”
The position statement also noted that there was an apparent exception in New Jersey’s statues denoting that public places are allowed to impose “reasonable restrictions” where facilities are reserved for “individuals of one sex,” such as summer camps, day camps, resort camps, bathhouses, dressing rooms, and more.
This exception was challenged by Goebert’s lawyers, who claimed the single-sex provision did not entitle facilities to discriminate on the basis of gender identity.
“Nowhere in the LAD is there an exclusion for the wholly-fabricated ‘invasion of privacy’ or ‘extreme emotional distress’ the Defendant is convinced would befall all of the other female guests of the spa were [Goebert’s] gender identity to be respected.”
While the case was originally scheduled for a jury trial on August 11, King Spa came to a settlement agreement with Goebert instead. An August 28 filing refers to a “separate, confidential settlement agreement between the parties resolving all claims” in the case, with no insight provided into how much King Spa agreed to pay Goebert for his “distress.”
In addition to the financial settlement, King Spa also signed a Consent Order and agreed to implement a number of “corrective” policy measures to satisfy Goebert.
Among the measures were that it was obligated to force every employee to undergo at least one hour of training conducted by an independent consultant specializing in “gender identity and gender expression.” The Consent Order notes that Goebert’s counsel would receive confirmation from the consultant once every employee had undergone the training, including a list of all of the employee’s names.
King Spa was also required to implement an employee handbook outlining their new policy on “non-discrimination … on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.” The handbook offers employees definitions on various “gender identity” concepts, and instructs employees to address clients on the basis of their preferred pronouns and name.
Distressingly, the handbook details that the spa’s sex-segregated facilities were effectively abolished, noting that anyone may access the sex-segregated spaces on the basis of self-declared “gender identity” alone, and emphasizing that areas requiring partial or full nudity will contain clients whose bodies may not align with “stereotypical expectations” for that gender.
Goebert’s lawsuit is not the first involving a trans-identified male lashing out at a Korean bathing establishment due to its sex-segregated policies.
In 2023, a court in Seattle, Washington, ruled that a female-only nude spa lacked the “constitutional right” to bar males from their facilities. The decision came after the spa sued the Washington State Human Rights Commission (WSHRC), which had forced them to change their sex-exclusive policy due to the complaint of a transgender patron.
The complaint was made by Haven Wilvich, who had sought a membership at the Olympus Spa in January of 2020, but had been denied on the basis that he had not undergone “gender reassignment” surgeries and his penis was fully intact. The WSHRC ruled in Wilvich’s favor, and demanded Olympus Spa revise its policies to ensure trans-identified males who claimed a female identity could access the female nude areas.
In March of 2022, Olympus Spa sued Andreta Armstrong, the executive director of the Washington State Human Rights Commission, asserting that the actions taken against them violated their First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of association.
But a Washington District Court dismissed their lawsuit in January of 2023, upholding the ruling by the WSHRC and affirming that the measures taken to prevent the spa from having a female-only policy were lawful.
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