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No Pseudonymity for Accountant Challenging Public Company Accounting Oversight Board Disciplinary Proceedings

Eugene Volokh | 6.10.2026 11:46 AM

From yesterday's D.C. Circuit decision in Doe v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson, Justin Walker, and Bradley Garcia):

Plaintiff John Doe—an accountant facing disciplinary proceedings before the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board—brought suit in district court, raising wide-ranging challenges to the Board's structure and operations. As part of that action, Doe sought leave to proceed under a pseudonym. The district court denied the motion. We affirm….

Doe asserts a privacy interest in the fact that he is the subject of a Board disciplinary proceeding because disclosure of that fact would harm his professional reputation by "brand[ing] him an outlier—'damaged goods'—among accounting professionals." Doe's privacy concerns are different in kind from those that "traditionally warrant pseudonymity," which typically involve " 'intimate issues such as sexual activities, reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, medical concerns, or the identity of abused minors.'" …

[And, a]s the district court explained, Doe relied only on general statements about the potential harms of public charges, and he did not submit any declarations to support those claims. The district court's approach is consistent with our precedents, which underscore that movants must make a "colorable showing of injury to a privacy interest" by offering something "concrete to establish that revealing [their] identity would cause" some "cognizable harm." That showing could take the form, for instance, of a declaration explaining the "substantial risk" that a "privacy injury" "would occur." The district court reasonably concluded that Doe's motion was insufficient on this front, as Doe "merely asserted" he would suffer a privacy injury........

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