Officials at the University of Pennsylvania have withdrawn their request for a judge to unseal the name of a trans woman who’s suing them.
“Jane Doe” is suing the Ivy League college, its hospital and various associates for medical malpractice, wrongful termination and a host of other claims.
On Aug. 2, Penn officials asked U.S. District Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg to unseal the plaintiff’s real name, claiming it’s unfair for her to hide “behind the shield of a pseudonym” while she criticizes named Penn employees in publicly accessible court documents.
But in an Aug. 21 filing, attorneys for the defendants told Goldberg they were dropping their request.
Doe asserted that if she’s outed, her HIPAA rights would be violated. HIPAA — the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 — is federal legis-lation that safeguards personal medical information from unwarranted disclosure.
Penn’s Aug. 21 filing denies any intent to violate HIPAA.
“This withdrawal of the Penn defendants’ opposition to the motion to proceed in anonymity should not be construed as an admission or concession that [Doe’s] al-legations are true, correct or supported by law. Moreover, the Penn defendants did not violate HIPAA in any way, nor do the Penn defendants ‘admit’ anything about their alleged conduct, as argued by [Doe] in her reply brief,” the filing states.
Doe’s Aug. 19 reply brief asserts that Penn defendants admitted behaving in a “heinous” manner toward her during the alleged incident.
Doe claims she was mistreated during a routine medical procedure at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in February 2018. Four months later, she was fired from her job at HUP, after the hospital allegedly exacerbated her gender dys-phoria.
Gender dysphoria is a medical condition that some trans people have. People with gender dysphoria feel distress because their assigned gender at birth doesn’t match their gender identity.
On July 2, Doe filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Penn-sylvania. The defendants include HUP, The University of Pennsylvania and its trustees, various Penn medical staffers and Penn police officers. The complaints against them include assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, anti-trans bias, false imprisonment, violation of privacy rights, sex discrimination and medical malpractice. Additionally, HUP is charged with wrongful termina-tion.
According to Doe’s Aug. 19 filing, “defendants seek to violate [Doe’s] HIPAA and other privacy rights, by releasing information protected by those laws.” The filing goes on to point out that “HIPAA protects identification and other personal health in-formation from disclosure. [To disclose Doe’s name] is against the public interest.”
But defense attorneys emphasized the “strong presumption” in federal cases that litigants will be identified by their real name. “For the sake of fairness and open access to the courts, [Doe] should be required to proceed in her own name in this litigation, and her motion to proceed in anonymity should be denied,” defense at-torneys wrote in an Aug. 2 filing.
Justin F. Robinette, a local civil-rights attorney who’s following the case, blasted Penn for previously trying to out Doe.
“The request was improper and demonstrated an appalling lack of sensitivity,” Robinette told PGN. “I earnestly believe that outing a trans person beyond the ex-tent to which they’re comfortable constitutes a form of harassment. It’s especially outrageous given today’s climate of violence and discrimination faced by trans people. Ive represented numerous LGBTQ litigants and they’ve all been anony-mous. Im shocked that an institution of higher education would be so callous. I just hope Penn has learned from this matter and will respect the privacy rights of trans people in the future.
Adrian M. Lowe, a staff attorney at the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania, said he was pleased that Penn withdrew the request.
“The AIDS Law Project uses pseudonyms in the majority of our litigation in feder-al and state court,” Lowe said, in an Aug. 23 email. “The ability to proceed under pseudonym is important for ensuring that plaintiffs who face high levels of stigma for who they are — such as transgender people and people with HIV — aren’t dis-suaded from accessing justice.”
A spokesperson for HUP said, “Ensuring respect for all our patients is a corner-stone of care across Penn Medicine, and we value and support diversity among both our patients and our workforce. At this time, we are withdrawing our opposition to the plaintiff’s motion to proceed with this case in anonymity, as we wish to maintain the fo-cus on the legal issues in the case.”