‘Anti-Vaxxer’ Mother Was Rightly Denied Pseudonymity

Friday, May 22, 2026

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Ninth Circuit:

‘Anti-Vaxxer’ Mother Was Rightly Denied Pseudonymity

Opinion Says No Error in Denial of Motion of Parent Challenging California’s Compulsory Vaccine Law Based on Absence of ‘Severe Harm,’ Drawing Dissent Highlighting Risks to Child Due to Public Hostility to Opting Out

By Kimber Cooley, associate editor

A divided Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held yesterday that a judge rightly denied a mother’s bid to proceed anonymously in a lawsuit against the Ventura Unified School District based on her child’s expulsion for failure to submit proof of inoculations required for attendance at California schools despite asserted religious objections, saying the parent had failed to show the requisite level of harm to justify withholding of her name.

The decision comes by way of a memorandum opinion signed by Senior Circuit Judge Richard A. Paez and Circuit Judge Consuelo M. Callahan, who asserted:

“[T]he district court did not abuse its discretion in determining that Doe’s fear of ‘social stigma’ does not amount to severe harm. The prospect of being publicly linked to an unpopular viewpoint alone does not warrant anonymity absent evidence linking disclosure to a severe injury.”

Circuit Judge Patrick J. Bumatay dissented, arguing that the majority employed too narrow a consideration of the factors at stake and did not take seriously the risk of retaliation against the minor at the heart of the dispute. He wrote:

“Few things in recent times can engender as much public hostility as challenges to vaccine mandates. After all, [former Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento] one of the authors of SB-277, which removed religious exemptions from California’s Compulsory Vaccine Law, once posted an article on social media suggesting that ‘opting out of vaccines should opt you out of American society,’ while comparing being ‘willfully unvaccinated’ to being a ‘drunk driver.’ ”

Complaint Filed

Seeking court approval to continue litigating the matter as a “Doe” plaintiff was the mother of a minor identified in the operative pleading only as “Child 1.” She, together with the advocacy group We The Patriots USA Inc., filed a complaint against the district, related officials, and the director of the Department of Public Health on May 22, 2025, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief based on First Amendment claims brought under 42 U.S.C. §1983.

Alleging that Doe “is currently facing criminal truancy charges after the Defendants expelled her son from one of the best public high schools in California because she will not violate her religious convictions by immunizing him,” the plaintiffs asserted in the complaint:

“Jane Doe left no stone unturned to get her son back into school. She requested a religious exemption, which the Defendants denied. She then asked the Defendants to accept proof of alternative [homeopathic] immunization that did not violate her religious beliefs. The Defendants refused. It was their way or no way.”

On May 25, Doe filed a motion seeking permission to proceed anonymously, asserting in the supporting memorandum:

“Defendants’ hostility, deceptive treatment, and prosecution of Plaintiff left her with no choice but to seek relief via this lawsuit….Plaintiff has no desire for publicity and is not an activist….Plaintiff realizes her beliefs are unpopular and fears further hostility, harassment by the public, and intrusive media attention….Furthermore, disclosing her identity would expose her child’s identity and his private medical information….[S]he submits this motion requesting the Court allow her and her child to use pseudonyms in all public-facing documents….”

In August, District Court Judge André Birotte Jr. of the Central District of California denied the request, saying that she failed to show that the harm she fears is reasonable or so severe as to outweigh the public’s interest in open court proceedings.

Severe Harm

Noting that “[t]o proceed pseudonymously, a ‘plaintiff must show both (1) a fear of severe harm, and (2) that the fear of severe harm is reasonable,’ ” Paez and Callahan opined:

“[T]he district court’s determination that Doe failed to show she reasonably feared severe harm was not an abuse of discretion. Doe’s interactions with public officials do not establish that the media or community members would retaliate against her in a severe manner, and Doe failed to identify other probative evidence rendering her fears reasonable. Rather, she expresses concern about what ‘could’ or ‘probably would’ happen. But bare assertions are insufficient to establish a reasonable fear of severe harm.”

Adding that, “[l]ikewise, the district court did not abuse its discretion in determining that Doe’s fear of ‘social stigma’ does not amount to severe harm,” they remarked:

“The prospect of being publicly linked to an unpopular viewpoint alone does not warrant anonymity absent evidence linking disclosure to a severe injury.”

As to the public interest, the jurists said:

“[T]he value of open courts extends beyond permitting public scrutiny of the legal issues in a given case. The public’s interest in having justice delivered openly, not ‘in a corner nor in any covert manner,’ is heightened in cases involving high-stakes, constitutional issues.”

They addressed the dissent’s concerns in a footnote, commenting: “The dissent argues that the district court erred by failing to analyze Child 1’s vulnerability as a factor supporting her own pseudonymity and Doe’s privacy interests….Doe failed to identify probative evidence supporting the reasonableness of her fear of severe retaliation. Moreover,… Plaintiff and her child do not share the same last name, further attenuating Doe’s fear that disclosure of her name would yield severe retaliation against Child 1.”

Bumatay’s View

Arguing that “the district court failed to consider the vulnerability of other individuals affected by the litigation—namely, Jane Doe’s minor child,” Bumatay wrote:

“Heightened risk to a minor child is precisely the situation here….This case involves highly personal information about her child, including his vaccination status and his learning disabilities….That Jane Doe does not share a last name with her minor child does not materially affect this analysis. ….[R]evealing Jane Doe’s identity would make her child’s identity open to discovery by people in the community, risking the retaliation or abuse that anonymity seeks to prevent.”

Saying that “the district court didn’t consider whether pseudonymity should have been granted ‘to preserve privacy in a matter of sensitive and highly personal nature,’ ” he asserted:

“The majority…bafflingly asserts that Jane Doe’s concerns are unreasonable. This ignores the substance of Jane Doe’s complaint. Jane Doe presented probative evidence that her son was excluded from school and that she was targeted for criminal prosecution for her child’s truancy….And…she reasonably pointed to ‘prevailing attitudes towards anti-vaxxers’ and ‘the potential implications of her case for the California’ public in asserting her fear that unwanted media attention and other negative public attention would cause her son social stigma, harassment, and threats.”

He continued:

“Jane Doe thus credibly presented evidence of real potential harm to her and her child in the form of unwanted attention and stigmatization, which she alleges would exacerbate her son’s disability and harm his social development. All this harm to Jane Doe’s child—yet Defendants would suffer no prejudice because all but one of them know who she is, and she has offered to disclose her identity to all of them. Nothing is unreasonable about these concerns.”

Asserting that “we should have reversed the denial of pseudonymity,” he said:

“We should have given greater consideration to the risk of harm to Doe’s minor child and to the public opprobrium against her deeply personal religious beliefs.”

The case is Doe v. Ventura Unified School District, 25-6117.