Many courts are quite willing to allow plaintiffs to proceed as Jane or John Does in sexual assault cases, see pp. 1430-34 of The Law of Pseudonymous Litigation. But for reasons that I can't explain (and that might just be path-dependent, based on the outcomes of a few early precedents), the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York appears to be much more skeptical of that. The many cases against Sean Combs have turned in that direction, with a few early decisions tentatively allowing pseudonymity being later reconsidered; see this May 13 decision by Judge Valerie Caproni, which is the ninth S.D.N.Y. lawsuit against Combs saying no to pseudonymity.
The same has been true of many still other cases. Here, for instance, is Judge Colleen McMahon's decision May 14 in A.P. v. Weinstein (S.D.N.Y.); it turns out that A.P. is Crystal McKinney, who has also sued Sean Combs (P. Diddy) for sexual assault:
A.P. brings the latest in a series of "Me Too" lawsuits against the notorious Harvey Weinstein, his former company Miramax, and the Walt Disney Company, which owned Miramax between 1993-2009, the period during which the incidents underlying this lawsuit allegedly took place. She has filed her one count complaint pursuant to the New York City Victims of Gender Motivated Violence Protection Action, alleging that Weinstein sexually assaulted her and a friend in 2003. She seeks leave to proceed anonymously.
That motion is denied.
There is a strong presumption against allowing a plaintiff to proceed anonymously, even in a lawsuit where the events in suit are unsavory—as the events in suit here surely are. Federal court proceedings and records are presumptively public absent a showing of exceptional circumstances. Sealed Plaintiff v. Sealed Defendant (2d Cir. 2008); Rapp v. Fowler (S.D.N.Y. 2021). There follows an analysis of the ten factors identified by the Second Circuit's as matters to consider when deciding an application for leave to file suit anonymously:
