HOUSTON (LN) — U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen dismissed all claims brought by De'borah Byrd, a former remote employee of Devoted Health Services Inc., ruling that despite suspicious timing between her disability accommodation request and her termination, she failed to produce substantial evidence that the company's performance-based reasons for firing her were a pretext for discrimination.
Byrd, who described herself as a "Black and Nigerian" woman, worked as a Member Outreach Specialist for Devoted Health, a Medicare Advantage insurer, from September 2022 until March 11, 2024. She sued under the ADA and Title VII, alleging disability discrimination, retaliation, failure to accommodate, hostile work environment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The case turned on a compressed and contentious timeline. Byrd returned from FMLA leave following abdominal surgery on February 5, 2024, and was assigned to a new team under supervisor Tiffany Pierce. Within weeks, Pierce had flagged Byrd for scheduling errors, documented 8.5 hours of unaccounted time over a two-week stretch, and accused her — according to Byrd's deposition testimony and her email to Human Resources — of stealing time during a February 27 exchange over a rescheduled shadowing session. Byrd testified that she had tried to reschedule because she was experiencing panic and anxiety attacks and needed to use the bathroom.
Two days later, on February 29, Devoted Health issued Byrd a Performance Final Warning citing call avoidance, failure to complete assigned tasks, and misrepresentation of working hours. That same day, Byrd submitted an accommodation request through third-party administrator SunLife for additional bathroom breaks. On March 8, SunLife sent Byrd a letter requesting more medical information. Three days after that, Devoted Health fired her.
Judge Hanen held that Byrd cleared the prima facie hurdle on her disability discrimination claim — her documented post-surgical complications and mental health conditions qualified as disabilities, and the tight sequence of events created at least some inference of discriminatory motive. But the court held that her pretext evidence fell short judgment stage.
Byrd's comparator evidence — an unauthenticated spreadsheet showing metrics for 11 other employees — was rejected as insufficient. The court noted she offered no sworn testimony explaining the data, no evidence the other employees were outside her protected class, and no information about their job titles, supervisors, or violation histories. The court quoted Fifth Circuit precedent that "[w]hen a plaintiff gives only a conclusory explanation about why an individual is an appropriate comparator, the plaintiff's discrimination claim fails."
On the retaliation claim, the court identified an additional gap: no evidence that Pierce or the other decisionmakers actually knew Byrd had submitted the SunLife application, as opposed to merely being directed to do so. The failure-to-accommodate claim failed for similar reasons, with the court holding there was no evidence the termination was designed to forestall the interactive process, particularly given that Devoted Health had itself encouraged Byrd to seek a formal accommodation.
The hostile work environment claim rested on two Slack posts — one by a coworker captioned "rising from the grave" and one by Pierce reading "Me 1 - Grim Reaper - 0!" — that Byrd argued constituted death imagery directed at her after she disclosed her sister-in-law's cancer diagnosis and her own medical conditions. When asked in her deposition whether she believed the posts were directed at her or connected to her race, national origin, or disability, Byrd testified: "I don't know."
The intentional infliction of emotional distress claim was dismissed as duplicative, the court holding it rested on the same conduct underlying the statutory discrimination claims and thus left no gap for the tort to fill under Texas law.
Byrd received a positive 2023 Annual Performance Review — delivered just four days before her termination — in which her previous supervisor wrote that she excelled in listening to members and asking questions, and that her ability to simplify complex problems led to high-level outcomes for members. The court acknowledged the review but noted it covered January through December 2023, was written by a prior manager who had no involvement with the new team, and addressed none of the performance issues Pierce had documented in 2024.
Devoted Health submitted an audio recording of a member call made after the Final Warning in which Byrd placed a member on hold for nearly 15 minutes ended the call — evidence the court held weighed against a finding of pretext.