John Doe v. Travis Hill

United States Court of Appeals
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
Argued December 10, 2024 Decided July 1, 2025
No. 24-5049
J OHN DOE ,
APPELLANT
v.
TRAVIS HILL , IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS ACTING
CHAIRMAN OF THE FDIC AND FEDERAL DEPOSIT I NSURANCE
CORPORATION ,
APPELLEES
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Columbia
(No. 1:24-cv-00488)
Alexandra Lichtenstein argued the cause for appellant.
With her on the briefs were Joanna K. Wasik, Kelsi Brown
Corkran, and Joseph W. Mead.
Sue Huhta was on the brief for amici curiae Community
Legal Services of Philadelphia, et al. in support of appellant.
Jane M. Lyons, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause
for appellee. With her on the brief were Matthew M. Graves,
U.S. Attorney at the time the brief was filed, and Brian P.
Hudak, Assistant U.S. Attorney.

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Before: MILLETT and RAO , Circuit Judges, and ROGERS ,
Senior Circuit Judge.
Opinion for the court filed by Circuit Judge M ILLETT .
M ILLETT , Circuit Judge: This is an interlocutory appeal
from the district court’s denial of John Doe’s motion to proceed
in his lawsuit under a pseudonym. Dr. Doe challenges the
constitutionality of the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation’s ban on hiring those who have been convicted of
a felony. He moved to proceed under a pseudonym to avoid
reassociating himself with his sealed Ohio felony convictions.
The district court denied Dr. Doe’s motion.
We affirm. Because federal court proceedings are
presumptively open and transparent, proceeding under a
pseudonym is rarely granted. Although Dr. Doe has a
legitimate privacy interest in his sealed felony convictions, that
interest is insufficient in this case to overcome the strong
presumption against pseudonymous litigation.
I
A
The Banking Act of 1933 created the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation to “provide for the safer and more
effective use of the assets of banks[.]” Pub. L. 73-66, 48 Stat.
162 (1933). The FDIC maintains the stability of the nation’s
financial system by insuring deposits valued in the trillions of
dollars.
By law, those who have “been convicted of any felony”
are barred from working for the FDIC. 12 U.S.C.

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§ 1822(f)(4)(E)(i); 12 C.F.R. § 336.4(a)(1). Congress
originally passed that prohibition to regulate hiring by the
Resolution Trust Corporation, an independent agency created
by Congress in response to the savings and loan crisis in the
late 1980s. Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and
Enforcement Act of 1989, Pub. L. No. 101-73, § 501, 103 Stat.
183, 392-393. When Congress transferred the Resolution
Trust Corporation’s responsibilities to the FDIC in 1993, the
statutory bar on hiring convicted felons carried over as well.
Resolution Trust Corporation Completion Act, Pub. L. No.
103-204, § 19, 107 Stat. 2369, 2404 (1993).
B
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure create a presumption
against pseudonymous litigation. Civil complaints filed in
federal court must “name all the parties[,]” FED. R. CIV. P.
10(a), and the suit must be prosecuted in “the name of the real
party in interest,” id. 17(a)(1).
This presumption is grounded in “the ‘customary and
constitutionally-embedded presumption of openness in judicial
proceedings.’” United States v. Microsoft Corp., 56 F.3d
1448, 1464 (D.C. Cir. 1995) (quoting Doe v. Stegall, 653 F.2d
180, 186 (5th Cir. 1981)). We generally require “parties to a
lawsuit [to] openly identify themselves * * * to protect[] the
public’s legitimate interest in knowing all of the facts involved,
including the identities of the parties.” In re Sealed Case, 971
F.3d 324, 326 (D.C. Cir. 2020) (“Sealed Case II”) (quoting
Microsoft, 56 F.3d at 1463) (formatting modified).
Requiring parties to litigate under their real names serves
important values. Accurate party names allow citizens to
evaluate the nature of the claims raised and the interests at
stake, to assess “the real-world aftermath of a suit,” and to

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determine for themselves whether “justice was done.” Doe v.
Massachusetts Inst. of Tech., 46 F.4th 61, 68 (1st Cir. 2022).
Knowing the identity of parties also makes it easier for citizens
to investigate abuses of the judicial process like judicial
conflicts of interest and ex parte contacts, and it promotes the
appearance of fairness. Id. at 68-69. “Secrecy breeds
suspicion[,]” and so “[s]ome may believe that a party’s name
was masked as a means of suppressing inconvenient facts and
that the court was either asleep at the wheel or complicit in the
cover up.” Id. at 69.
Nonetheless, federal courts may grant “the rare
dispensation of pseudonymous status” when warranted to fairly
provide justice in a particular case. See Sealed Case II, 971
F.3d at 328. Exercise of that discretion is guided by a five-
factor balancing test that considers (1) the strength and
sensitivity of the privacy interests at stake, (2) the risk of
retaliation against a named plaintiff, (3) the sensitivity of the
party’s age, (4) the identity of the opposing party, and (5) the
risk of unfairness to the opposing party. In re Sealed Case,
931 F.3d 92, 97 (D.C. Cir. 2019) (“Sealed Case I”).
Those five factors are “non-exhaustive,” and the court’s
“flexible and fact driven” inquiry ultimately depends on the
totality of the circumstances of the case before it. Sealed Case
II, 971 F.3d at 326. Together, the five factors and any other
relevant considerations gauge the competing public and private
interests at stake in the litigation and guide the court’s
determination of whether the presumption against
pseudonymity has been overcome.
The moving party bears the burden of showing that the
interest in proceeding under a pseudonym outweighs the
“countervailing interests in full disclosure.” Sealed Case II,
971 F.3d at 326 (quoting Sealed Case I, 931 F.3d at 96). In

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this circuit, requests to proceed under a pseudonym in the
district court are referred to the Chief Judge of the United States
District Court for the District of Columbia. D.D.C. Local Civ.
R. 40.7(f).
C
Dr. Doe was convicted of two Ohio felonies when he was
a young man in the early 1990s. Since then, Dr. Doe has lived
a law-abiding life, obtained a PhD, and become a federal public
servant with a security clearance. In 2009, he applied for and
received a pardon from the Ohio governor, and his felony
convictions were sealed by an Ohio court.
Under Ohio law, a governor’s pardon provides one basis
for an individual to seek sealing of his or her criminal
conviction. OHIO REV. CODE ANN . § 2953.33(A)(3) (West
2025). When a criminal conviction is sealed, the conviction
generally “shall be considered not to have occurred[,]” and the
public record of the conviction is made inaccessible to the
public. Id. § 2953.32(D)(2)(b) (West 2025). Nonetheless, at
the time giving rise to the events of this case, Ohio law allowed
employers to ask about sealed felony convictions when the
“question bears a direct and substantial relationship to the
position for which the person is being considered.” Id.
§ 2953.33(B)(1) (West 2022). Individuals with a sealed
felony conviction did not have a right under state law to answer
as if the conviction had not occurred.1
1 Ohio law now forbids employers from asking questions about
sealed felony convictions, and anyone with a sealed conviction may
answer as if the conviction never occurred. O HIO REV. CODE ANN.
§ 2953.34(L)(1) (West 2025). There are, however, limited
exceptions for sensitive government positions like law enforcement.
See id. § 2953.34(A)(6) (West 2025).

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In 2022, Dr. Doe applied to work at the FDIC. After
running a background check on Dr. Doe, the FDIC requested
information about his criminal record, and Dr. Doe informed
the FDIC about his sealed Ohio felony convictions. The FDIC
then denied his application because of the statutory bar against
hiring anyone who “has been convicted of any felony[.]” 12
U.S.C. § 1822(f)(4)(E)(i).
Dr. Doe then sued the FDIC, challenging the
constitutionality of the bar on hiring felons. Dr. Doe alleges
violations of his constitutional rights to equal protection,
substantive due process, and procedural due process under the
Fifth Amendment. U.S. CONST . Amend. V. He also alleges
a violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C.
§ 1681b(b)(3).
Simultaneously with filing his complaint, Dr. Doe moved
to proceed under a pseudonym. The district court denied Dr.
Doe’s motion. Doe v. McKernan, No. 24-CV-488, 2024 WL
1143932, at *3 (D.D.C. Feb. 23, 2024). The court credited Dr.
Doe’s arguments that he would experience psychological harm
if he were publicly reassociated with his felony convictions and
that his suit poses no risk of unfairness to the government
because it already knew or could easily learn his identity. Id.
at *2-3. The court thus held that factors two and five of the
Sealed Case I framework favored pseudonymity. Id. At the
same time, the district court concluded that a privacy interest
in a felony conviction is not akin to the traditional privacy
interests that warrant pseudonymity, and that Dr. Doe’s suit
against the federal government favors transparency, so that
factors one and four weighed against pseudonymity. Id. Dr.
Doe conceded that factor three does not favor pseudonymity
because Dr. Doe is not a minor. Id. at *3. After balancing all
of the factors, the district court concluded that Dr. Doe must
proceed under his real name. Id. This appeal followed.

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II
The district court had jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331.
Our jurisdiction arises pursuant to the collateral order doctrine.
Sealed Case I, 931 F.3d at 95.
We review “de novo the criteria used by a district court to
decide whether to grant a motion to proceed anonymously,”
and we review the “application of those criteria” to the facts of
a particular case for an abuse of discretion. Sealed Case I, 931
F.3d at 96. Neither party argues that the district court erred in
its choice of legal criteria or that other factors should have been
considered, so our review is limited to whether the district
court’s application of the criteria in this case was an abuse of
discretion. An error of law is “‘by definition’ an abuse of
discretion[.]” Jeffries v. Barr, 965 F.3d 843, 855 (D.C. Cir.
2020) (quoting Koch v. Cox, 489 F.3d 384, 388 (D.C. Cir.
2007)).
III
The district court did not commit legal error when
applying the Sealed Case I factors, and the court’s balancing of
the relevant considerations in this case was well within its
discretion. All agree that the third factor—age of the parties—
does not support pseudonymity, McKernan, 2024 WL
1143932, at *3, and we assume without deciding that the
district court appropriately concluded that the second (risk of
retaliatory physical or mental harm) and fifth (prejudice to the
opposing party) factors weighed in favor of anonymity. So
this case comes down to the court’s application of the first
(preserving privacy) and fourth (parties involved) factors.
Because the district court reasonably concluded that those

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factors disfavor pseudonymity and outweigh the other factors,
we affirm.
A
The first factor concerns “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 [a] sensitive and highly personal
nature[.]” Sealed Case I, 931 F.3d at 97 (citation omitted).
The district court appropriately exercised its discretion in
concluding that Dr. Doe’s felony convictions do not qualify as
“matter[s] of [a] sensitive and highly personal nature.” Id.
In judicial proceedings, the starting presumption is of
openness and public identification of the parties. Sealed Case
II, 971 F.3d at 325; Sealed Case I, 931 F.3d at 96. Dr. Doe’s
privacy interest does not weigh against that presumption for
three reasons.
First, a privacy interest rests “in part on the degree of
dissemination of the allegedly private fact[.]” Reporters
Comm., 489 U.S. at 763. A felony conviction is not
“practical[ly] obscur[e]” because felony trials and convictions
are matters of public record conducted in open court
proceedings. ACLU v. Department of Justice, 655 F.3d 1, 9
(D.C. Cir. 2011) (quoting Department of Justice v. Reporters
Comm. for Freedom of Press, 489 U.S. 749, 762 (1989)). As
a result, “[i]f someone wants to know whether his neighbor or
potential employee has been indicted for, convicted of, or pled
guilty to a[n] * * * offense, he may well find out by simply
entering a Google search for that person’s name.” ACLU, 655
F.3d at 10. Even convictions that occurred before the internet
era may be easily discoverable as newspapers upload their

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archives. This accessibility reduces the weight of a privacy
interest in a felony conviction for purposes of pseudonymity.
Dr. Doe argues that, even if felony records are usually
public, his efforts to keep his records secret should matter. Dr.
Doe has paid for monitoring services and has requested his
Identity History Summary from the FBI.
Yet the types of privacy interests for which pseudonymous
proceedings have commonly been permitted have not turned on
individualized efforts to suppress otherwise publicly accessible
information. Instead, courts consider whether the information
is of a kind that, by its very nature, is likely to be withheld from
and inaccessible to others. The privacy interests that
traditionally warrant pseudonymity—“intimate issues such as
sexual activities, reproductive rights, bodily autonomy,
medical concerns, or the identity of abused minors[,]” Sealed
Case II, 971 F.3d at 327—concern very sensitive information
that the public has recognized as insulated from public scrutiny
through legal norms and custom.
Felony convictions are not in that category as they have
long been a legitimate matter of inquiry for public employment
and other positions of trust. The law has historically allowed
the government to place such positions off limits for those who
have “violated the criminal laws[.]” Hawker v. People of New
York, 170 U.S. 189, 191 (1898); see NASA v. Nelson, 562 U.S.
134, 152 (2011) (“Like any employer, the Government is
entitled to have its projects staffed by reliable, law-abiding
persons[.]”)
While individual resources and efforts can help make
private information less accessible, such efforts do not require
the court to give more weight to the asserted privacy interest.
Nor does the absence of such expenditures diminish the

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inherently private character of an interest. After all, it would
not be fair to the public or to other parties for the court to treat
resources expended as a relevant measure of the intensity of
someone’s privacy interest in information.
Second, the Ohio court’s sealing of the record of Dr. Doe’s
convictions does not materially alter the privacy balance in this
case. To be sure, sealed cases “raise[] greater privacy
concerns than the disclosure of information regarding public
convictions[.]” ACLU, 655 F.3d at 17.
But not so here. Dr. Doe’s sealing was based on an
executive pardon. Applications for an executive pardon in
Ohio are submitted to the Ohio parole board which must
conduct and publish “a thorough investigation into the
propriety of granting a pardon[.]” OHIO REV. CODE A NN .
§ 2967.07 (West 2025); Reports, O HIO DEP ’ T OF REHAB. &
CORR., https://drc.ohio.gov/about/resource/reports/1-reports?
keyword=clemency (last visited May 23, 2025).
The Ohio Constitution also mandates that all granted
pardons be publicly reported to the Ohio legislature. OHIO
CONST . ART . III, § 11 (“The Governor shall communicate to the
general assembly, at every regular session, each * * * pardon
granted, stating the name and crime of the convict, the
sentence, its date, and the date of the * * * pardon[.]”).
This means that, in addition to the public court proceeding
underlying the convictions, the very process that enabled Dr.
Doe to seal his records resulted in at least two more public
processes and records publicly disclosing his felony
convictions—one from the parole board and one from the
Governor.

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To be sure, these records may later have been sealed along
with the underlying court records. But while Dr. Doe was
seeking a court order sealing all records associated with his
conviction, these new records were publicly available. At that
time, information about Dr. Doe’s convictions could have been
accessed, preserved, or publicized by any member of the
public. That, in fact, may have occurred in this case because
the FDIC discovered Dr. Doe’s criminal convictions using a
“commercial investigative service.” App. 11.
Third, Dr. Doe relies upon cases brought under the
Freedom of Information Act that concern whether the
government must disclose to FOIA requesters private
information about other persons. See Reporters Comm., 489
U.S. at 757; ACLU, 655 F.3d at 3-4. While FOIA cases help
to elucidate Dr. Doe’s privacy interest in his sealed criminal
record, FOIA’s relevance largely stops there.
Specifically, FOIA’s statutory balancing of privacy and
public interests is not the same as the historic presumption in
favor of open and transparent judicial proceedings. See
Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia, 448 U.S. 555, 564-569
(1980) (tracing the presumption of open judicial proceedings
back to the Middle Ages). After all, FOIA vindicates the
public interest in understanding only the operations and
activities of the Executive Branch, 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(A)(iii),
and does so within the caveated and qualified disclosure
requirements of the statute, 5 U.S.C. § 552(b) & (c).
In addition, while FOIA’s purpose is to open Executive
Branch operations to public view, that is a qualified and
caveated goal. FOIA carefully balances the private and public
interests implicated in a records request because disclosure is
“not always in the public interest,” CIA v. Sims, 471 U.S. 159,
167 (1985), when “private interests [can] be harmed,” FBI v.

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Abramson, 456 U.S. 615, 621 (1982). In fact, FOIA permits
the government to withhold personnel files and other records
of private information if disclosure “would” or “could” result
in an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. 5 U.S.C.
§ 552(b)(6) & (7)(C). To overcome FOIA’s privacy
exception for law enforcement records, a FOIA requester
generally must identify specific “misfeasance” by the
executive branch and provide “credibl[e]” evidence of it.
National Archives & Records Administration v. Favish, 541
U.S. 157, 173 (2004); see also 5 U.S.C. § 552a(b)(2)
(prohibiting agencies from disclosing information about
private citizens when a FOIA exemption applies).
As a result of FOIA’s numerous exceptions to disclosure
and privacy protections, the withholding of information from
public view, in whole or in part, is common under FOIA. See
DEPARTMENT OF J USTICE , 2024 ANNUAL FOIA REPORT
SUMMARY 9 (2025) (reporting that only 22.84% of requests led
to records released in full).
By contrast, exceptions to openness in judicial
proceedings are “rare.” Sealed Case II, 971 F.3d at 328. Of
course, FOIA and its protections against the disclosure of
private citizens’ information do not apply to the Judicial
Branch at all. 5 U.S.C. § 552(f)(1). Instead, judicial
proceedings traditionally start with a presumption of openness,
transparency, and full disclosure of party filings and, unlike
FOIA, 5 U.S.C. § 552(b) & (c), there is no long list of
exceptions. The public’s historic and presumptive right to
monitor whether federal courts are doing justice between
parties, and how parties are using the courts to vindicate their
own interests, have led courts to enforce across-the-board rules
of disclosure concerning the parties’ filings, including the
parties’ identities and facts about them that are salient to the
resolution of their case. Only limited exceptions are allowed.

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As a result, at both the starting and ending points, the judicial
rules of public transparency and disclosure are far less yielding
than the qualified disclosure scheme Congress created with
FOIA.
In sum, although Dr. Doe has some legitimate privacy
interest in his thirty-two-year-old felony convictions, and their
sealed status somewhat increases the weight of that interest, he
has not shown that his interest in confidentiality qualifies as the
type of compelling, sensitive, and highly personal privacy
interest that would tilt the first factor in his favor.2
B
Dr. Doe also objects to the district court’s assessment of
the fourth factor, which Sealed Case I described as “whether
the action is against a governmental or private party[.]”
Sealed Case I, 931 F.3d at 97 (citation omitted). According to
Dr. Doe, the district court turned factor four into a catch-22 by
using a test that weighs factor four against pseudonymity both
when the suit is against a private party and when it is against
the government. Relying on the Fifth Circuit’s decision in
Southern Methodist University Association of Women Law
Students v. Wynne & Jaffe, 599 F.2d 707 (5th Cir. 1979), Dr.
Doe argues that factor four is concerned exclusively with
reciprocal risk to reputation. In Wynne & Jaffe, the Fifth
2 In reaching our conclusion, we need not (and so do not) decide
that information in sealed criminal records is always insufficient for
factor one to favor pseudonymity. For example, substantially
different considerations could be at play if a record were sealed
because of exoneration. The Supreme Court has indicated that there
is a very strong privacy interest in criminal records where the
individual’s association with the record is due to “mere
happenstance.” Favish, 541 U.S. at 166.

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Circuit held that when a private party sues another private
party, it is unfair for one private party to have its reputation put
at risk by having its name in the case caption while the other
private party escapes reputational risk by proceeding under a
pseudonym. 599 F.2d at 713. That concern does not apply
when the government is a party, the court reasoned, because
the government’s reputation is unaffected by litigation. Id.
In other words, according to Dr. Doe, factor four should always
weigh in favor of pseudonymity when the other side is the
government. Because the district court here held that factor
four considers the public interest in the litigation and therefore
disfavors pseudonymity in this lawsuit against the government,
Dr. Doe says that approach makes the factor always weigh
against appearing under a pseudonym.
The catch-22 that Dr. Doe perceives is a product of his own
misunderstanding of factor four’s role. That consideration
looks to the identity of the opposing party as a tool for
measuring the public interest in transparent litigation.
Reputational harm can be one relevant public interest because
a lack of reputational reciprocity can create unfairness in
litigation strategies, risks, and tactics.
But that is not the only relevant concern. The nature of
the claim raised against a party can also affect the extent of the
public interest in transparent litigation. See generally Sealed
Case II, 971 F.3d at 329. For example, constitutional claims
can only be pressed against a government or a close
governmental affiliate, and yet they have much more far-
reaching consequences for the public interest than most private
litigation. On the other hand, class actions or private antitrust
actions seeking broad or structural relief against private
businesses could trigger a more significant interest in
transparency than one person’s claim for an individual
monetary payment from the government.

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In other words, factor four is not a binary factor that always
tips one way or the other based on the identity of the non-
moving party. Rather, depending on the nature of the claims
raised and relief sought, the identity of a party can materially
change the public interest in open and evenhandedly
transparent litigation.
The particular claims pressed by Dr. Doe against the
government are at the apex of public interest in litigation in two
respects.
First, Dr. Doe asks this court to invalidate as facially
unconstitutional a provision of federal law—the statutory
provision prohibiting the FDIC from hiring persons with felony
records, 12 U.S.C. § 1822(f)(4)(E)(i). Declaring
unconstitutional a statutory provision duly enacted by both
Houses of Congress and signed into law by the President is the
“gravest” ruling a court can issue. United States v. Nassif, 97
F.4th 968, 974 (D.C. Cir.), cert. denied, 145 S. Ct. 552 (2024)
(quoting Hodge v. Talkin, 799 F.3d 1145, 1157 (D.C. Cir.
2015)). That is because such facial challenges invalidate laws
across the board no matter to whom they are applied.
Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican
Party, 552 U.S. 442, 449 (2008). In so doing, facial
challenges “threaten to short circuit the democratic process by
preventing laws embodying the will of the people from being
implemented in a manner consistent with the Constitution.”
Id. at 451. Given the far-reaching consequences of the relief
Dr. Doe seeks, the public interest in understanding the genesis
and generator of the litigation is great.
Second, Dr. Doe also brings an as-applied constitutional
challenge arguing that, at a minimum, the law is
unconstitutional as applied to the facts of his case. See

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Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124, 167 (2007) (explaining that
as-applied challenges consider the specific context of the
plaintiff’s claim). The very nature of such a claim, however,
turns upon individualized factors and information about Dr.
Doe’s circumstances and relevant characteristics. And that
could well include Dr. Doe’s identity in a case like this that
seeks to invalidate a law because it seeks information about the
individual. In other words, information about the plaintiff’s
identity and his trustworthiness notwithstanding his felony
convictions sits at the heart of Dr. Doe’s as-applied
constitutional challenge.
Critically, the statutory provision that Dr. Doe seeks to
invalidate is one that protects the operation and integrity of the
Nation’s financial system by barring those convicted of a
felony from working at the FDIC. 12 U.S.C.
§ 1822(f)(4)(E)(i). A past conviction for violating the very
laws that the FDIC enforces, for example, could present a very
different as-applied constitutional question from a past
conviction for a non-financial felony, like removing
paleontological resources from federal land, 16 U.S.C.
§ 470aaa-5(a)(1), or transporting a lottery ticket across state
lines, 18 U.S.C. § 1301. Even assuming (without deciding)
that Congress could not proscribe hiring felons based on some
circumstances, Congress might still appropriately forbid
wolves from guarding the henhouse by banning those
convicted of financial felonies from working at the FDIC. Cf.
FDIC v. Mallen, 486 U.S. 230, 241 (1988) (holding there is a
“significant” public interest in suspending “indicted bank
officers”). Tellingly, even under the law governing Ohio’s
sealing of Dr. Doe’s conviction record at the time he applied to
the FDIC, Ohio employers could still consider his criminal
record if it bore “a direct and substantial relationship to the
position for which” he applied. OHIO REV. CODE ANN .
§ 2953.33(B)(1) (West 2022); see generally Nelson, 562 U.S.

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at 152 (government may consider criminal history when
making employment decisions); Gilbert v. Homar, 520 U.S.
924, 932 (1997) (holding there is a “significant interest in
immediately suspending” an official “when felony charges are
filed against them”).
These considerations create a substantial public interest
not only in the case, but also in the identity of the proponent of
an as-applied claim and the circumstances surrounding his
felony conduct. Those are the same factors that will provide
the decisional basis for the court’s constitutional ruling, and
shielding those critical factors from public view will reduce
transparency in a case of public consequence and will make it
more difficult for the public to understand and to trust the
court’s ruling.
Dr. Doe argues that applying factor four in this way will
chill litigants from suing the government for constitutional
violations. That argument overlooks the peculiar nature of Dr.
Doe’s constitutional challenge to a law about employees’
trustworthiness. The argument also forgets that the fourth
factor is just one of five non-exclusive considerations for courts
to weigh in deciding whether pseudonymity is warranted. See
Sealed Case I, 931 F.3d at 97; Sealed Case II, 971 F.3d at 326-
327. The problem for Dr. Doe is that so few of those factors
favor pseudonymity in his case—including the diminished
nature of his privacy interest—and he has not identified other
relevant factors the district court should have, but did not,
include in its analysis.
Dr. Doe’s argument also fails to accord any meaningful
weight to the public interest and its presumptive right to
transparent judicial proceedings in cases of far-reaching public
consequence. A byproduct of government transparency is that
those who seek to alter public law by using the federal courts

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must, in all but truly exceptional cases, reveal their identity so
that the public can understand the issues before the court, the
consequences of the court’s ruling, and the manner in which
the court reached its decision. After all, secrecy in court
proceedings was one of the evils of concern at the Founding.
See Federal Farmer, Letter XV (Jan. 18, 1788), reprinted in 2
THE COMPLETE ANTI -FEDERALIST 320 (Herbert Storing ed.
1981) (decrying “secret and arbitrary proceedings” and
extolling public trials as “the means by which the people are let
into the knowledge of public affairs—are enabled to stand as
the guardians of each others’ rights, and to restrain, by regular
and legal measures, those who otherwise might infringe upon
them”).
* * * * *
In sum, the district court did not abuse its discretion in
weighing the relevant factors and then denying Dr. Doe’s
motion to proceed under a pseudonym. Although the
government challenges the district court’s analysis of factor
two (risk of harm), this court need not address that argument
given our denial of Dr. Doe’s appeal.
IV
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district
court denying Dr. Doe’s motion to proceed under a pseudonym
is affirmed.
So ordered.

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