United States District Court, W.D. Virginia, Roanoke Division
MEMORANDUM OPINION [1]
ROBERT
S. BALLOU UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE
In this civil rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the
plaintiff has moved for leave to proceed under the pseudonym
“John Doe.” I heard oral argument on the motion
on March 13, 2017. I conclude that the plaintiff's
interest in remaining anonymous does not outweigh the
presumption of openness in judicial proceedings. Accordingly,
I deny the plaintiff's motion.
I.
BACKGROUND
The
plaintiff is a senior at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and
State University (“Virginia Tech”), who hopes to
attend medical school. In the fall of 2016, the plaintiff
enrolled in an epidemiology course taught by Dr. Pamela Ray.
Dr. Ray approached the plaintiff during the final examination
and informed him that another student had accused him of
cheating. Dr. Ray then collected the plaintiff's answer
sheet and advised him that he would be contacted by the
university's honor court.
The
plaintiff appeared before an honor panel on February 24,
2017. After hearing from the plaintiff and Dr. Ray, the panel
found against the plaintiff. As a result, he received an
“F” in the course. During the disciplinary
proceedings, the plaintiff never learned the identity of the
student who had accused him of cheating.
The
plaintiff filed this action on January 15, 2018 claiming that
Virginia Tech violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to due
process “when it neglected to identify [the
plaintiff's] accuser or provide him with an opportunity
to confront and question his accuser.” Compl. ¶
44, Dkt. No. 1. The plaintiff further asserts that he was
wrongly disciplined as a result of the alleged constitutional
violations, and that he “suffers ongoing harm to his
good name and educational progress.” Id. at
¶ 45.
The
plaintiff filed his complaint under the pseudonym “John
Doe, ” but did not seek permission to proceed under a
pseudonym. Virginia Tech moved to dismiss the complaint under
Rule 10(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In
response, the plaintiff seeks leave to proceed under a
pseudonym.
II.
ANALYSIS
Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure 10(a) requires that a complaint
“name all the parties.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 10(a).
“‘This rule embodies the presumption, firmly
rooted in American law, of openness in judicial proceedings,
' which dates back to the English common law and finds
support in First Amendment protections of freedom of speech
and press.” Candidate #452207 v. CFA Inst., 42
F.Supp.3d 804, 806 (E.D. 2012) (quoting Doe v.
Merten, 219 F.R.D. 387, 390 (E.D. Va. 2004)).
“Pseudonymous litigation undermines the public's
right of access to judicial proceedings. The public has an
interest in knowing the names of the litigants, and
disclosing the parties' identities furthers openness of
judicial proceedings.” Co. Doe v. Pub.
Citizen, 749 F.3d 246, 273 (4th Cir. 2014) (citations
omitted).
The
presumption of openness is not absolute. See id. The
Fourth Circuit “has recognized that in exceptional
circumstances, compelling concerns relating to personal
privacy or confidentiality may warrant some degree of
anonymity in judicial proceedings, including use of a
pseudonym.” Id. (citing James v.
Jacobson, 6 F.3d 233, 238 (4th Cir. 1993)). In
Jacobson, the Fourth Circuit identified five
nonexclusive factors for courts to consider when determining
whether to allow a party to proceed anonymously:
[1] whether the justification asserted by the requesting
party is merely to avoid the annoyance and criticism that may
attend any litigation or is to preserve privacy in a matter
of sensitive and highly personal nature; [2] whether
identification poses a risk of retaliatory physical or mental
harm to the requesting party or even more critically, to
innocent non-parties; [3] the ages of the persons whose
privacy interests are sought to be protected; [4] whether the
action is against a governmental or private party; and [5]
the risk of unfairness to the opposing party from allowing an
action against it to proceed anonymously.
Jacobson, 6 F.3d at 238. Proceeding under a
pseudonym, however, is a “rare dispensation.”
Id.; see also Pub. Citizen, 749 F.3d at 274
(holding that “when a party seeks to litigate under a
pseudonym, a district court has an independent obligation to
ensure that extraordinary circumstances support such a
request by balancing the party's stated interest in
anonymity against the public's interest in openness and
any prejudice that anonymity would pose to the opposing
party”).
Applying
the Jacobson factors, I conclude that this case does
not present the type of extraordinary circumstances in which
the moving party's stated interest in anonymity outweighs
the presumption of openness in judicial proceedings. First,
the plaintiff argues that his identity must be concealed to
protect him from the “lasting stigma [associated with]
having been found guilty of cheating” and the adverse
effects that such allegation would have on his ability to
compete for admission into medical school. Pl.'s Br. 6,
Dkt. No. 4. Such concerns, while understandable, do not
involve “the type of ‘personal information of the
utmost intimacy' that warrants abandoning the presumption
of openness in judicial proceedings.”[2] Merten,
219 F.R.D. at 392. Indeed, federal courts presented with
similar facts have consistently reached the same conclusion.
See CFA Inst., 42 F.Supp.3d at 808 (holding that an
“interest in avoiding embarrassment, criticism, and
reputational harm [incident to an allegation of cheating] are
not privacy interests in a matter of an especially sensitive
or highly personal nature and, otherwise, are not sufficient
to overcome the public interest in the openness” of a
civil proceeding); Doe v. Brown Univ., 209 F.Supp.3d
460, 466 n. 2 (D.R.I. 2016) (finding that the need for
transparency in the public court proceeding outweighed the
plaintiff's desire for anonymity in a case involving
allegations of academic dishonesty); Doe v. Univ. of
Akron, No. 5:15-cv-2309, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 192433,
at *9-11 (N.D. Ohio Feb. 3, 2016) (concluding that a law
student's concerns regarding the stigma associated with
allegations of plagiarism and the effects that it may have on
future career opportunities did not justify permitting the
plaintiff to proceed pseudonymously, and emphasizing that
“similar cases across the country are routinely
litigated by law students in their own name”).
Accordingly, the first Jacobson factor weighs
against permitting the plaintiff to proceed under a
pseudonym.
The
second factor considers whether identification poses a risk
of retaliatory physical or mental harm to the plaintiff or
innocent non-parties. The plaintiff does not argue this
factor, and no evidence has been offered that identifying the
plaintiff or any other students by their actual names
presents any risk of retaliatory physical or mental harm.
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