A woman who accused Garth Brooks of sexual assault can potentially keep her real name hidden, a federal appeals court has ruled.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned a trial judge’s ruling last year that Jane Roe must use her real name in the litigation, which centers on her accusations that the country star assaulted her while she worked for him as a hairstylist.
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The lower judge had ruled that her need for privacy was “weakened” because the “cat” was already “out of the bag” after Brooks publicly disclosed her name in court filings and she accidentally included it in another. But in its decision Wednesday (Nov. 4), the appeals court said that’s not how it should work.
“We are not persuaded that the proverbial cat is out of the bag here,” the appeals court wrote in the ruling, obtained by Billboard. “Internet sleuths might speculate that Roe is a particular person [but that is] not the same as a public broadcasting of Roe’s certain identity.”
Neither side’s attorneys immediately returned requests for comment on Thursday (Nov. 5).
The accuser filed her claims against Brooks in Los Angeles court in October 2024, claiming he exposed her to “appalling sexual conduct,” including an alleged incident in which she says he raped her during a May 2019 stay in a Los Angeles hotel room. Brooks has vehemently denied the allegations, calling them “lies” aimed at forcing him to pay “hush money.”
Weeks before that case was filed, Brooks had quietly filed his own preemptive lawsuit in Mississippi federal court under a John Doe pseudonym, accusing an unnamed Jane Roe of extorting him with threats of a public lawsuit. After she filed her case in Los Angeles, Brooks refiled his own lawsuit with her real name listed.
The move quickly sparked outrage from the accuser’s attorneys, who immediately moved to reseal her name and seek legal penalties against Brooks. They also asked the media not to disclose the name, and Billboard abided by that request.
Last year, the judge overseeing the federal case in Mississippi ruled that Roe was not entitled to proceed under a pseudonym. He cited the fact that her name had already been disclosed, both by Brooks and in an inadvertent filing in the California case.
But in Wednesday’s appeal decision, the Fifth Circuit said those disclosures did not mean Roe was less entitled to use a pseudonym in a case dealing with issues of the “utmost intimacy.”
“As to the fact that Roe’s name was a matter of public record for short periods, that was either because of Doe’s actions (which Roe objected to), or Roe’s inadvertent disclosures which counsel corrected,” the appeals court wrote. “In sum, we agree that Roe’s privacy interest … should not be weakened for these reasons.”
The ruling was not an outright reversal, and did not order the lower court to allow Roe to keep her name shielded. Instead, it merely said the trial judge analyzed the situation incorrectly and should reconsider in light of the appellate court’s decision: “We express no view on the ultimate outcome of this issue.”
The ruling might finally allow for progress in the litigation over the accusations against Brooks, which has been largely stalled for more than two years and remains in the earliest stages. The Mississippi case will proceed first, followed by the Los Angeles lawsuit.
