First Department allows plaintiff to sue anonymously

Most plaintiffs file lawsuits in their name, but some cannot. They proceed as John Doe or Jane Doe, but proceeding anonymously requires permission from the trial court, which weighs different factors in determining if the public's right to know the parties to public lawsuits is outweighed by the plaintiff's right to privacy. These motions are not always granted. In this case, the trial court denied Jane Doe's motion, but the First Department says Jane Doe can proceed anonymously.

The case is Doe v. Kipp, a First Department ruling issued on May 6. I briefed and argued the appeal. Doe is a teacher for a charter school who was fired after highly intimate video circulated in the school community depicting her in a sex act. Her affidavit in favor of anonymity said there was no way her career would survive if she had to litigate this case case under her name, and it explained the psychological damage that would ensue in the event she could not proceed as Jane Doe. The trial court denied her motion, and the case went to the First Department. Here is the reasoning:

Defendants do not identify any source of prejudice to them from allowing plaintiff to proceed by pseudonym, as they know who she is and therefore are not impeded in mounting a defense . The public interest in disclosure of plaintiff’s identity is also minimal. Even if the charter school defendants were deemed public entities for these purposes, that fact would not be dispositive, especially because plaintiff is not requesting that court records be sealed or public access denied. Furthermore, the termination decision at issue here is not claimed to be the result of any government policy.

One issue was whether the identity of the defendant, a charter school, factored into whether plaintiff could proceed anonymously. A line of cases makes it harder to proceed as a Jane Doe plaintiff when she is suing a governmental entity. But charter schools are not not quite governmental entities, though they are regulated by the government. Defendant's status as a charter school, highly relevant to the trial court's ruling against plaintiff, did not prevent the First Department from ruling in her favor.

It was not clear to the plaintiff's team why the defendant fought so hard to prevent plaintiff from suing the charter school anonymously. Their appellate briefs argued in part that the public has the right to know plaintiff's identity since it might have been her fault that students had accessed the sex video. But the lawsuit did not concede that it was her fault that students had accessed the video, and it may have been that she was the victim of "revenge porn."