NCLA to SCOTUS: Does Sarbanes-Oxley Protect Anonymity in Challenging PCAOB Constitutionality?

John Doe v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, et al.

Washington, DC, Nov. 09, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, the New Civil Liberties Alliance petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve a pressing issue in John Doe v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. NCLA asks the Justices to decide whether the strict confidentiality required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 for nonpublic PCAOB disciplinary proceedings should allow NCLA client John Doe, an accountant, to stay anonymous in his court case challenging the constitutionality of the Board’s proceeding against him. 

In related proceedings, Doe seeks declaratory and injunctive relief to stop the Board’s unlawful disciplinary proceeding against him, alleging numerous constitutional defects including the Board’s private funding mechanism, its deprivation of Doe’s due process and jury-trial rights, and its usurpation of Article III judicial power. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied Doe’s request to litigate that case under a pseudonym. It held that Sarbanes-Oxley’s confidentiality mandate does not protect the names of Board-accused accountants and is therefore entitled to no weight in assessing whether Doe may litigate his court case pseudonymously. That holding conflicts with First Circuit decisions, which say that comparable statutory confidentiality provisions should weigh “heavily” in requests to litigate ancillary court proceedings using a pseudonym.

The D.C. Circuit’s holding that Sarbanes-Oxley does not protect the names of Board-accused accountants is also egregiously wrong and in conflict with the settled understanding of Sarbanes-Oxley shared by legislators, accountants, and regulators (including the Board itself) since Congress enacted the statute. And the court compounded its error by violating the “party-presentation principle,” which instructs courts to decide cases based on the arguments presented by the parties. Here, none of the parties—not Doe, not the Board, and not the U.S. Government—ever argued that the D.C. Circuit’s interpretation of Sarbanes-Oxley was correct or even plausible.

NCLA released the following statements:

“When Congress makes a legislative policy judgment that a certain nonpublic regulatory proceeding demands strict secrecy, that judgment should weigh heavily—if not conclusively—in favor of allowing the target of such a proceeding to challenge its constitutionality in court using a pseudonym. Our petition gives the Court an ideal opportunity to make that clear.”
— Russ Ryan, Senior Litigation Counsel, NCLA

“The D.C. Circuit wrong-footed itself in this case by not following the party-presentation principle. By deciding an issue that no party presented, it unsettled an understanding of the mandatory secrecy provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that have been universally and uniformly understood for 25 years. The Supreme Court needs to grant cert in this case or summarily reverse the judgment below.”
— Mark Chenoweth, President, NCLA

For more information visit the case page here.

ABOUT NCLA
NCLA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the Administrative State. NCLA’s public-interest litigation and other pro bono advocacy strive to tame the unlawful power of state and federal agencies and to foster a new civil liberties movement that will help restore Americans’ fundamental rights.

Joe Martyak
New Civil Liberties Alliance
703-403-1111
joe.martyak@ncla.legal