A federal appeals court panel has refused to revive a lawsuit by a female prison guard who was fired for making sexual comments to and sharing personal information with a male inmate.

Lisa Hatch simply didn’t prove discrimination was behind her termination from the Franklin County Jail, Judge Thomas I. Vanaskie found in the opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.

Hatch appealed to the circuit court after U.S. Middle District Judge Yvette Kane dismissed her suit against Franklin County and prison administrators. Hatch claimed she was subjected to a hostile work environment.

The path that led to Hatch’s firing began in February 2014 when the male inmate reported she had been making inappropriate sexual comments to him, including talking about her sex life. The inmate also claimed Hatch gave him her Facebook information, would flick her tongue at him, discussed her mental health issues and complained about her job, Vanaskie noted.

Hatch admitted some of the allegations, including discussing her mental health with the inmate, when confronted by prison investigators, the judge wrote. Vanaskie cited Hatch’s claim that she did things like singing and sticking out her tongue to make the prisoner laugh.

“She maintained her behavior was not inappropriate, but rather was done to ‘build a rapport with inmates’,” Vanaskie wrote.

Prison officials disagreed and in March 2014 fired Hatch for conduct “unbecoming of an officer and detrimental to the spirit of” the jail. She had worked at the prison for six years.

Hatch insisted in her suit that she was fired because of her sex and mental health condition and because she had taken a federally-guaranteed medical leave. Vanaskie found she provided no proof of such discrimination.

The circuit judge also rejected Hatch’s argument that she was punished more severely than other white male guards at the Franklin jail who broke the rules. Hatch cited instances where a male guard was suspended for sharing personal information with inmates and where four others were suspended for talking to an inmate about religion, posting on Facebook about dating an inmate’s sister, and harassing another officer.

None of those cases involved behavior that was “as ongoing, personal, and sexually explicit as the behavior that led to (Hatch’s) termination,” Vanaskie found.

Nor, he concluded, did “sparse discussions” by prison officials regarding Hatch’s mental health create a “severe or pervasive hostile work environment.”