A woman accusing Garth Brooks of sexual assault has won another opportunity to keep her identity private after a federal appeals court set aside a ruling requiring her to use her real name.
In a November 4 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit directed a Mississippi federal court to reconsider whether the woman, identified as Jane Roe, may proceed under a pseudonym. The decision does not guarantee anonymity or determine whether her allegations are true.
Roe filed a lawsuit against Brooks in California in October 2024, alleging sexual assault, including an alleged rape in a Los Angeles hotel room in May 2019. Brooks has denied the allegations and accused her of attempting to extort money from him.
Weeks before Roe filed her complaint, Brooks brought his own lawsuit in Mississippi under the name John Doe, alleging extortion and defamation. He subsequently disclosed her identity in an amended complaint after she publicly named him in the California proceedings.
The appeals court identified several problems with the lower court's reasoning. It found that Roe's position as a defendant in the Mississippi case should not count against her request for anonymity. It also concluded that prior disclosures of her identity, including accidental disclosures corrected by her lawyers, did not establish that she had intentionally abandoned that request.
The Mississippi court must now reconsider the anonymity question. The allegations against Brooks and his claims against Roe remain disputed, with the latest decision addressing how the litigation may proceed rather than resolving the underlying accusations.
