Ring Boys Scandal Lawsuit Against WWE, TKO, Vince McMahon, & Linda McMahon Update – Judge Rules Against McMahons & Allows Ring Boys Plantiffs to Stay Anonymous

As noted before, a lawsuit was filed in October of 2024 against WWE, WWE’s parent company TKO Group, former WWE Chairman Vince McMahon, and Linda McMahon on behalf of the survivors of the infamous WWE Ring Boys scandal in 1992. Additional survivors joined as plaintiffs for the lawsuit following the Maryland Supreme Court upholding the Maryland Child Victims Act as being constitutional in February of 2025. More survivors joined as plaintiffs this past April and filed new additional allegations. The plaintiffs filed a motion this past January requesting to maintain anonymity in the lawsuit, which was opposed by Vince and Linda McMahon.

Post Wrestling and Wrestlenomics’ Brandon Thurston reported that Judge James K. Bredar ruled on Thursday rejecting the McMahon’s efforts to require the ring boys plaintiffs to put their real names into the public record in regards to the on-going lawsuit.

Thurston reported that this ruling means that the ring boys’ names will remain known to the defendants, whose identities have been disclosed since early in the case, but unknown go the public trial through the pretrial phase.

In his ruling, Judge Bredar found that two factors of the five-factor test for anonymity that weighed the most heavily were in favor of the plaintiffs for the case. The first factor was the allegations of childhood sexual abuse “are particularly sensitive and personal even beyond other allegations of sexual abuse.” The second factor was Bredar had agreed that the plaintiffs would be at risk of significant harm if their names were known to the public. Bredar agreed with the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ assertion that “there is a significant risk of subjecting Plaintiffs to re-traumatization if they are forced to publicly reveal their identities, making them permanently available on the Internet.”

In his ruling, Bredar stated:

“Defendants complain that Plaintiffs themselves have generated some of [the widespread] media attention [this case has received], but the Court finds that this is not the sole explanation [for that attention. Defendants are public figures, whose counsel, like Plaintiffs’ counsel, have made statements about the case to press, and the case relates to [quoting from the plaintiffs’ earlier filing] an ‘ongoing national conversation about sexual misconduct against minors and involving people with fame.’”

Bredar also stated that if the plaintiffs make statements that actually or effectively reveal their identities, then they may lose their right to anonymity in the case.

Bredar also stated that any witnesses should only be given as much identifying information as that witness “reasonably needs to know” and that “disclosure shall never be made to the media or press.” Thurston reported that this is believed to be an explicit instruction that the defendants leaking any John Doe’s name to the press would be a violation of the order the judge is instructing them to submit within a month for his approval.