The fear is usually specific. Not that people will find out in the abstract, but that a name will appear in a database that an employer, a family member or a stranger can search.
That fear is worth answering precisely rather than reassuringly, because the answer has parts that are better than people expect and parts that are worse.
Whether a survivor has a right to proceed without her name is a separate question with a separate answer, set out on suing without your name in Texas. This article assumes that question has been answered and asks the next one: what is on the public record either way.
The starting position
Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 76a states the baseline in one sentence: "Court records are presumed to be open to the general public."
Sealing a court record is possible, and Rule 76a is the mechanism, but it requires a showing that on balance the presumption of openness is outweighed. It is a motion, decided by a judge, on a record. It is not a checkbox on a filing form, and it is not something a lawyer can promise in advance.
Rule 76a is also often confused with the rules on party anonymity. It governs the sealing of court records. It is not the provision that lets a plaintiff use a pseudonym. Those are different questions with different answers, which is why the two are treated separately here.
What a filed petition puts on the record
A petition is a public document from the moment it is filed. Court dockets are searchable online in Texas counties that publish them, by party name.
What a petition contains depends on how it is drafted, and that is within a lawyer's control. A petition has to plead enough facts to state the claims. It does not have to be a narrative of the assault. There is a real difference between a petition that establishes what a property owner knew and when, and one that recounts what happened to the plaintiff in detail, and the first can be both the better pleading and the less exposing one.
This is a conversation worth having before anything is filed, not after.
Where a confidential identity provision exists
Texas has written a confidential identity provision into three places relevant here.
Section 98.007 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, for a suit under Chapter 98, human trafficking.
Section 98B.008, for a suit under Chapter 98B, intimate visual material, including artificial intimate visual material. That section was added by S.B. 441 effective 1 September 2025.
Section 30.013, for a plaintiff younger than eighteen in a suit based on conduct that is felonious under Penal Code Section 22.011 or 22.021. Subsection (f) of that section was repealed effective 4 December 2025.
Outside those three, there is no Texas statute giving an adult sexual assault survivor who is not a trafficking claimant and not suing under Chapter 98B a right to proceed anonymously. In that situation it is a request to the trial court. The distinction, and what it means in practice, is on the anonymity page.
What a confidential identity provision actually does
Take Section 98.007 as the example, since its terms are the clearest.
Under that section the court must make it known to the claimant early in the proceedings that a confidential identity may be used, must allow its use in all filings and court documents, must use it in all proceedings and records, and must maintain the records confidentially. Use is the claimant's option, not a requirement. Section 98B.008, added by S.B. 441, imposes the same duties on a court in a Chapter 98B suit.
Section 98.007 also states who may still reach the claimant's true identifying information: the judge, the parties, their attorneys, and persons authorized by a specific court order. Unauthorized disclosure is punishable as contempt.
That last paragraph is the part people are not told, and it matters. A confidential identity keeps a name out of the caption, out of the filings and off the record that the public can reach. It does not keep the name from the other side of the case. A defendant and defense counsel are parties and their attorneys. It also does not restrict what the defendant, defense witnesses or a journalist may say about a case that has been filed.
That is meaningful protection, aimed at the exposure people most often describe. It is just narrower than the phrase suggests, and it is better to know that before filing than to learn it afterward.
Discovery is a different question from filing
Filing puts a petition on the public docket. Discovery is the separate process that happens afterward, and what is exchanged there is handled differently from what is filed with the court. How sensitive material is protected in a particular case is a question to raise with a lawyer before discovery begins rather than after, and this article does not state a general rule about it. Ask what protection will be sought, and ask early.
Two records categories come up repeatedly, and both have their own pages, because both deserve more than a paragraph: therapy records and questions about sexual history. What happens with social media is on can they see my social media.
Settlement is also a different question
Whether a settlement is confidential is negotiated rather than automatic. That has its own page, will my settlement be confidential, and the separate question of what an NDA costs you to sign is on the NDA page.
The honest summary
Filing a lawsuit in Texas creates a public record. How much that record says about you is substantially a drafting decision. Whether your name is on it depends on which chapter your claim arises under and, outside those chapters, on a judge. Either way the other side of the case knows who you are. What happens after filing is a separate set of questions, and they are managed rather than left to chance.
None of that is a reason to file without understanding it, and none of it is a reason to assume the answer is no. It is a set of questions with real answers, and they can be worked through before anything is filed.
There is no charge for that conversation and no attorney's fee unless there is a recovery.
Call 713-521-0059.
Authorities
Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 76a (sealing court records)
Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code ch. 98 (trafficking, including Section 98.007)
S.B. 441, 89th Leg., R.S. (2025), adding Section 98B.008 (confidential identity)
Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code ch. 30 (confidential identity, plaintiff under 18)
This article is general information about Texas law, not legal advice about your situation, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.