Appeals Court Overturns Order That Garth Brooks Accuser Use Her Real Name

A federal appeals court has overturned a lower court's order that the woman suing Garth Brooks must use her real name in her case. The ruling, reported by Billboard on 5 November 2026, sends the question back to the trial judge.

The woman, who is identified in court filings as Jane Roe, filed her claims in Los Angeles in October 2024. Her lawsuit alleges that Brooks sexually assaulted and battered her in May 2019, during a stay in a Los Angeles hotel room. She has said she worked for him as a hairstylist and makeup artist, according to Reuters. These are allegations, and no court has ruled on them.

The name fight started in Mississippi. Weeks before the Los Angeles case was filed, Brooks sued in federal court there under the placeholder name John Doe, accusing Roe of extortion. Courts use "John Doe" when a party's identity is kept off the public record. After she filed in Los Angeles, Brooks refiled the Mississippi case with her real name in it.

The trial judge in Mississippi decided that Roe's need for privacy was weakened. His reasoning was that Brooks had already disclosed her name, and that it had also appeared in a filing made by mistake. Roe's side asked for the order to be reversed.

The Fifth Circuit disagreed with that reasoning. It said her privacy interest should not be reduced because her name appeared publicly for short periods. Those periods came either from actions she had objected to, or from accidental disclosures that her lawyers corrected. The court also said that online guessing about who she is "is not the same as a public broadcasting of Roe's certain identity." It added: "We are not persuaded that the proverbial cat is out of the bag here." That phrase means a secret has already escaped, and the court was not convinced that had happened.

The ruling does not let Roe proceed under a pseudonym, though. The appeals court sent the matter back for the trial judge to think it through again, and wrote: "We express no view on the ultimate outcome of this issue." In other words, the judge in Mississippi will decide the question again, and the appeals court has not said how it should come out.

For readers following the case, the practical point is simple. Her name is still tied to the court record for now, and the decision about whether she can keep it out of public filings has moved back to the lower court. The underlying claims in Los Angeles and the extortion accusation in Mississippi are separate matters, and neither has been resolved.