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Credit: Disney/DeSantis, edited by ITMFlorida Governor Ron DeSantis has been found by a court to have violated the Consitution, and the Walt Disney Company just got a huge new weapon in its legal battle against him and the controversial Central Florida Tourism Oversight District.
DeSantis is currently facing several different lawsuits from Disney, but he just took a huge legal defeat in a case not directly related to the House of Mouse. In 2022, the conservative governor suspended Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren, allegedly because he had refused to enforce Florida laws surrounding abortion. Warren sued on First Amendment grounds, asserting that he had expressed personal opinions in opposition to the laws but had not used any of his authority to block the laws.
Related: DeSantis Board Takes Bids To Change Disney World Forever
Basically, Warren claimed, much like Disney, that DeSantis had used his executive power in political retaliation when he had publically spoken out against the governor’s policies, a violation of the first entry of the Bill of Rights.
While a federal district court initially dismissed the case, the 11 Circuit Court of Appeals found for Warren in a unanimous decision, dealing DeSantis a huge blow and giving the Walt Disney Company a massive precedent for its own First Amendment case. The decision, in part, read as a scathing rebuke, saying, “The First Amendment prevents DeSantis from identifying a reform prosecutor and then suspending him to garner political benefit.”
The full decision can be read here:
Almost immediately, the Walt Disney Company filed the Warren decision in its lawsuit against DeSantis (per the Orlando Sentinel), asserting it as evidence that the corporation deserves the same protection against political retaliation from a political figure.
Disney is currently suing DeSantis and the CFTOD on similar First Amendment grounds. The company claims that the governor dissolved the Reedy Creek Improvement District (the special tax district around Walt Disney World that it had been permitted to run for decades) in political retaliation for publically decrying the Parental Rights in Education Act, popularly referred to as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
The Disney lawsuit against DeSantis, which has been updated to cite Warren v. DeSantis can be read here:
Related: DeSantis Board Spent Hundreds of Thousands of Taxpayer Dollars To Accuse Disney of Mishandling Money
The Warren decision is a huge asset to Disney’s case, as the company can now cite a higher court’s ruling as evidence that the governor has violated the First Amendment for political gain, its own exact legal argument. Disney quoted a key part of the decision, which reads:
“[F]or the same reason that the government can’t muzzle so-called ‘conservative’ speech under the guise of preventing on-campus ‘harassment’ … the state can’t exercise its coercive power to censor so-called ‘woke’ speech with which it disagrees…”
This is not great news for the presidential candidate, who is already facing a bill to return the CFTOD to Disney (which is likely to fail in the state legislature, but still not a good sign) and accusations of cronyism, corruption, and incompetence in the board that he replaced Reedy Creek with. Disney has been beating down the CFTOD with new filing after filing, and this First Amendment decision is a huge step forward for the company.
Inside the Magic reached out to Governor DeSantis’s office for comment, but has not heard back by the time of publishing.
Do you think DeSantis has a chance against the Disney lawsuit at this point? Let us know in the comments below!