In July 2022, Port Townsend, Washington, resident Julie Jaman, then 80-years-old, was banned for life from her local YMCA pool. Her crime? Objecting to the presence of a biological male in the women’s locker room.
Several days after the incident, she shared her story in an interview on KIRO Newsradio’s The Dori Monson Show.
Jaman had been a regular at the pool for 35 years when she encountered a man dressed in a women’s bathing suit in the shower and changing area of the facility.
“I saw a man in a woman’s bathing suit watching maybe four or five little girls pulling down their suits in order to use the toilet,” Jaman recalled. “I asked if he had a penis and he said it was none of my business. I told that man to ‘get out right now.’”
She told a pool staff member what had happened. Jaman said she was “stunned” when the staff member accused her of “being discriminatory,” informed her that she was “permanently banned from the pool,” and said they were contacting the police.
“She didn’t ask me what the problem was, if I was okay, nothing about me. It’s as if she was just waiting to pounce on me. It was just stunning.”
As she was leaving, another staff member approached Jaman. “She told me that I was being discriminatory and not following the YMCA principles and values. I told her I respect all human beings and I’m not following any ideology.”
Jaman told Monson about a conversation she’d had with Olympic Peninsula YMCA CEO Wendy Bart:
I told her there were no signs posted to give women warning. She said there were Pride posters posted all over and she assumed that was adequate to inform women what to expect.
That’s fine with me, except that they do not provide alternatives for women who choose not to be undressing in front of men. Our pool is a very old pool. We just have two shower rooms, dressing rooms, one for men, one for women.
Jaman’s experience came to the attention of the Center for American Liberty, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit group dedicated to protecting the civil liberties of American citizens. CAL filed a lawsuit against the Olympic Peninsula YMCA and the City of Port Townsend in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington to defend Jaman’s First Amendment right to free speech.
According to a CAL news release, “the lawsuit asserted that city officials and YMCA staff violated Jaman’s constitutional rights when they banned her for speaking out about safety concerns involving young girls.”
Hellbound and Down 