A woman accusing Garth Brooks of sexual assault may be allowed to keep her identity confidential, a federal appeals court has ruled.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned a trial judge’s ruling that Jane Roe had to use her real name in the case. Roe accuses Brooks of assaulting her while she worked for him as a hairstylist.
The lower-court judge had said Roe’s privacy interest was “weakened” because her name was already “out of the bag”: Brooks had disclosed it in court filings, and it was also included by mistake in a separate filing. But in a decision issued Wednesday, the appeals court rejected that reasoning.
“We are not persuaded that the proverbial cat is out of the bag here,” the court wrote. “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.”
Roe brought her claims against Brooks in Los Angeles in October 2024. She alleges that he subjected her to “appalling sexual conduct,” including raping her during a May 2019 stay in a Los Angeles hotel room. Brooks has strongly denied the claims, calling them “lies” intended to make him pay “hush money.”
Weeks before Roe filed her case, Brooks had filed a preemptive lawsuit in federal court in Mississippi under the pseudonym John Doe. He accused an unnamed Jane Roe of extortion, alleging she threatened to sue him publicly. After Roe filed her Los Angeles case, Brooks amended his lawsuit to identify her by name.
Last year, the judge overseeing the Mississippi case ruled that Roe could not proceed anonymously, citing the previous disclosures of her name by Brooks and in the inadvertent California filing.
The Fifth Circuit said those disclosures did not eliminate Roe’s interest in privacy in a case involving matters 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 court wrote. “In sum, we agree that Roe’s privacy interest … should not be weakened for these reasons.”
The appeals court did not order the trial judge to let Roe use a pseudonym. It found that the judge had applied the wrong analysis and directed the court to reconsider the issue. “We express no view on the ultimate outcome of this issue,” the ruling said.
The decision could help move forward litigation over the allegations against Brooks, which has been largely stalled for more than two years and remains at an early stage. The Mississippi case is set to proceed first, followed by the lawsuit in Los Angeles.