U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
Jeffrey Howard v. Cherokee Health Systems
This writing
- Type
- Opinion
- Author
- Eric Earl Murphy
- Filed
- Sept. 2, 2025
- Case
- Jeffrey Howard v. Cherokee Health Systems
- Case status
- Decided
Opening text
The first passage of the document, as extracted by the source provider.
NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION File Name: 25a0413n.06 No. 24-5981 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT FILED Sep 02, 2025 ) JEFFREY W. HOWARD, KELLY L. STEPHENS, Clerk ) Plaintiff-Appellant, ) ) ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED v. ) ) STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR ) THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF CHEROKEE HEALTH SYSTEMS, TENNESSEE ) Defendant-Appellee. ) ) OPINION Before: WHITE, LARSEN, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges. MURPHY, Circuit Judge. For decades, Jeff Howard served as the chief financial officer for Cherokee Health Systems. Howard worked under Dennis Freeman, Cherokee’s longstanding chief executive officer. When Freeman announced his retirement plans, Howard approached him about applying to be the next CEO. But Freeman recommended a different candidate. Howard applied anyway, so Freeman fired him. Howard claims that Freeman took this action because he wanted a female to replace him. And Howard alleges that Cherokee’s board refused to consider him because his counsel sent a letter complaining about Freeman’s alleged sex discrimination. Yet Howard failed to produce enough evidence to show that Cherokee’s neutral reasons for these decisions were pretextual. We thus affirm the grant …
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