A statue of Walt Disney and Micky Mouse stands in front of the Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., Jan. 9, 2019. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File). Inset: Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The war between Florida and the Magic Kingdom wages on, as the Sunshine State’s governor asked a federal court to toss Disney’s retaliation and breach of contract lawsuit.
Lawyers for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) filed a motion to dismiss on Monday, arguing that the Mouse House doesn’t have standing to sue and that its complaints are barred by sovereign and legislative immunity.
Disney sued DeSantis in April, alleging that the governor’s support for a law dismantling the longstanding Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID) — the largely autonomous, Disney-run district where the company’s amusement parks and entertainment offerings are located — was retaliation for Disney’s opposition to the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which DeSantis signed in March 2022. That law prohibits “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in certain grade levels or in a specified manner.” Opponents and LGBTQ+ advocates have said the bill is discriminatory and unconstitutional.
The governor’s motion to dismiss took issue with the very existence of the RCID, calling its creation in a 1967 agreement a “sweetheart deal” that vested Disney “with unprecedented power to govern itself” and saying that it is a “clear” case of “corporate capture.”
Disney’s powers through the RCID, according to DeSantis, are virtually unlimited, and nefariously so:
Special districts in Florida typically operate for limited governmental purposes — water-management services, for example. RCID’s powers, however, gave Disney carte blanche to govern itself. Local taxes? Disney set them. Building and safety codes? Disney set those, too. Caps on land development? Disney made the final call. Disney could exercise eminent domain, permitting it to annex territory even outside the District’s borders, all without legislative approval. It could build and operate an airport, or even a nuclear power plant.
Lawyers for DeSantis made sure to include a culture war dog whistle, referring to the state where Walt Disney first opened Disneyland, in its description of the creation of the CFTOD.
“In 2022, the Legislature passed, and the Governor signed, a tandem of bills reining in RCID’s outsized authority and reconstituting it as a new entity — the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District (CFTOD), the governing board of which would be selected not by a California corporation, but by the People’s elected chief executive — the Governor—and confirmed by the People’s representatives in the Senate,” the motion says.
The filing describes the outgoing RCID agreements as nothing more than a meager attempt by Disney to stay afloat.
“In the waning days of its corporate kingdom, Disney rushed through a series of collusive agreements between itself and its puppet RCID board,” the filing says.
In substance, the motion to dismiss says that the government entities are protected by sovereign immunity under the 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as well as legislative immunity.
The governor’s motion incorporated a separate motion to abstain or dismiss filed concurrently by the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District (CFTOD), which called Disney’s lawsuit a “frontal assault” on the “bedrock principle of our constitutional order” — specifically, state sovereignty.
The CFTOD says that Disney “has gone to great lengths in its attempt to thwart the will of the people of Florida,” including the last-minute agreements with the outgoing RCID and the federal lawsuit.
In its lawsuit, Disney alleged that after it expressed ongoing opposition to the anti-LGBTQ+ law, DeSantis launched a “campaign of punishment” that included the dissolution of the RCID and the creation of the CFTOD, which consists of board members handpicked by the governor. After the CFTOD discovered that the outgoing RCID board had made deals that would essentially maintain the status quo, the CFTOD filed a lawsuit in state court demanding that those agreements be declared unconstitutional.
The Florida defendants argue that Disney’s claim should have been filed in state court, not federal, and that the federal judge should hold off on proceeding with the case until the issue pending in state court — whether the Development Agreement and Restrictive Covenants are enforceable — is resolved. Disney has sought to have that claim dismissed.
The case is before U.S. District Judge Allen Cothrel Winsor, who was appointed by DeSantis’ political rival Donald Trump. Winsor took over the case after Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker recused himself from the matter in June. Walker, a Barack Obama appointee, wrote that DeSantis’ request that he be disqualified was “without merit,” but in the end, Walker recused because he has a relative who owns stock in Disney.
Read DeSantis’ motion to dismiss, below.
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