from DOE v. UNIVERSITY. pennsylvaniaThe 3rd Circuit issued its decision Friday, with an opinion from Judge Tamika Montgomery-Reeves and Judges David Porter and Jane Ross:
In 2020, Doe enrolled in Penn State’s pre-med bachelor’s degree program…. She plans to complete the program in the spring of 2021 and apply to medical school. Doe claims that a chemistry professor in the program discriminated against her based on her race, denied her an extension, unfairly graded her and reported her for academic dishonesty. She reported the discrimination to Penn State. According to Doe, Penn State retaliated, launching a flawed academic integrity investigation that found her guilty of academic dishonesty and suspended her for a year and a half. Doe further believes
[b]Penn State improperly suspended Plaintiff and noted it on her transcript and disciplinary record, harming Plaintiff’s future educational and career prospects. Specifically, as a result of Penn’s actions, Plaintiff will be forced to disclose and explain to the medical school and potential employers to which she may choose to apply that she has been disciplined at Penn for academic dishonesty….
As a result, Plaintiff has suffered and will continue to suffer reputational harm, financial loss, and harm to future educational and career prospects.
The district court refused to allow Doe to sue anonymously (under Title VI and state contract law), which the Third Circuit held was not an abuse of discretion:
The ability to process anonymously is limited to special cases. exist U.S. Department of Energy v. Meglis, the court proposed a two-step test to determine whether a litigant presented a special case. First, a litigant must allege a “reasonable fear of serious harm” arising from “not using a pseudonym to litigate.” Second, if the party adequately alleges such harm, then the court will apply a balancing test to determine whether the party’s reasonable fear of serious harm “outweighs the public interest in public proceedings.”
Doe failed at step one because she did not allege a reasonable fear of serious harm. “The plaintiff may suffer embarrassment or financial loss” is not sufficient to allege serious harm I will get it. Instead, “serious harm was found in cases involving ‘abortion, birth control, gender reassignment'” [sic]mental illness, welfare rights of children born out of wedlock, AIDS and homosexuality.
Doe claimed she had to remain anonymous to avoid harming her ability to be admitted to medical school or secure future employment in the medical profession. But this Court finds that harm of this type – embarrassment and financial harm – cannot form the basis of an action under a false name.
{The cases Doe cited in her opening statement to support her assertion that “courts across the United States routinely grant pseudonyms in cases involving university misconduct” are materially different from this case. Beyond that, all of the cases cited by the DOE involved allegations of intimate partner violence, sexual assault, sexual misconduct or similar themes. The last case she cited did not occur in a university context but involved an allegation that a prisoner was shackled during childbirth. None of the cases support Doe’s contention that the facts behind her claims “focus on private and intimate moments.”
The decision does not set a binding precedent, but it can be used as a persuasive precedent, and I expect it will.
