Cases & Developments

Order overruling Plaintiff’s Objection to Magistrate Judge’s Order on Plaintiff’s Use of Pseudonym. Plaintiff, a student at the University of Southern Indiana, brought Title IX claims against the University after he was suspended for sexual harassment. Though the court had previously granted plaintiff’s unopposed motion to proceed under pseudonym, “in the wake of recent Seventh Circuit caselaw,” it “ordered the parties to show cause as to why this case should or should not proceed under pseudonym,” and the magistrate judge found plaintiff failed to demonstrate the required “special circumstances.” In overruling plaintiff’s objection, the court held plaintiff’s assertion of previous social media threats and an online petition that seemed to urge the University to hold him accountable were insufficient to warrant anonymity because they indicated that his identity was already known. It held that the magistrate judge did not err in finding that his relocation to a different state mitigated against anonymity, noting plaintiff “has designated no evidence that his location is unknown to the public or that anyone has harmed him physically when he resided on [the University’s] campus or at his new place of residence. It similarly noted that “[t]he Seventh Circuit has clearly held that the confidentiality of an underlying Title IX proceeding is immaterial to the question of whether a Title IX private right of action can proceed under pseudonym in federal court.”