From Civil Servant 1 v. Office of Special Counsel, decided yesterday by Chief Judge James Boasberg (D.D.C.):
Plaintiffs Civil Servants 1–5 are former federal employees whose jobs were "terminated during their probationary periods as part of the Administration's mass firings in February 2025." They each filed a prohibited personnel practice (PPP) complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, only for the agency to summarily close each of their cases because they were probationary employees. Plaintiffs now bring this lawsuit alleging that OSC unlawfully closed thousands of probationary-employee complaints without considering their individual merits, undermining the workplace protections once afforded to probationary workers and violating the Administrative Procedure Act….
Generally, a complaint must identify the plaintiffs. That requirement reflects the "presumption in favor of disclosure [of litigants' identities], which stems from the 'general public interest in the openness of governmental processes,' and, more specifically, from the tradition of open judicial proceedings." A party moving to proceed pseudonymously thus "bears the weighty burden of both demonstrating a concrete need for such secrecy, and identifying the consequences that would likely befall it if forced to proceed in its own name." …
Plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden to show that their privacy interests outweigh the public's presumptive and substantial interest in learning their identities.
To begin, the Court finds that Plaintiffs' privacy interests do not implicate "a matter of a sensitive and highly personal nature." Plaintiffs contend that being "publicly linked to litigation" challenging the current administration "could have long[-]term consequences" for their careers. Certainly, when a plaintiff points to concrete career harms that would result from the disclosure of her identity, this factor favors pseudonymity. For instance, the Court granted pseudonymity for a doctor who was accused of misconduct that, if disclosed, would have prevented her from practicing. Doe v. Lieberman (D.D.C. 2020). [Note that not all judges agree on this point; some categorically conclude that pseudonymity can't be justified by a risk of reputational and professional harms, which is a commonplace risk in civil litigation. -EV]
