Forming a company town for the Walt Disney Corp., as one senator whimsically described it, was as arguable decades ago as it is to Gov. Ron DeSantis now. Nevertheless, doing so met only token resistance in 1967. Disney World would transform Florida’s identity, become the state’s biggest employer, a massive growth engine for Central Florida, a tourism mecca for a mega-state and a source of tax revenue last estimated at $5.8 billion annually.
For the next 55 years, including the first three of the DeSantis regime, no politicians in either party challenged Disney’s unique governance. They all respected a political maxim: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But DeSantis is eager to break things and bully people to show how tough he is. His declared political war on Disney, now more than a year old, has no precedent in Florida or any other state.
This epic legal clash could reach the U.S. Supreme Court, and the governor should not be overconfident of the outcome. The lawsuit Disney filed against DeSantis last week pointedly cites the court’s 2010 decision in the controversial Citizens United case that invoked the First Amendment to protect political spending by corporations, and it asserts the sanctity of contracts, a cause of great importance to conservatives.
Disney’s freedom of speech is the core issue, no matter how DeSantis contrives to deny it.
He had no quarrel with Disney until the company objected mildly last spring to his Parental Rights in Education bill, known to its critics as the Don’t Say Gay law. His legislative handmaidens promptly abolished Disney’s Reedy Creek special taxing district, the core of its governance, delaying the effective date by a year.
They didn’t stop to think that it would be sticking taxpayers in Orange and Osceola counties with about $1 billion in Disney’s debts. When that became clear, they came back with an invention called the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, run by DeSantis loyalists with no role for the company.
Destroying contracts
Disney maneuvered out of that by having Reedy Creek contract responsibilities to the company in a way that would leave the Oversight District board with little to do. Now the governor has his legislators voting with the board to repudiate those contracts. The lone Republican opposing the maneuver is Sen. Joe Gruters of Sarasota, a former state GOP chairman who’s close to former President Donald Trump.
Gruters, a CPA, must have read Section 10 of Article I of the Florida Constitution, which prohibits “any law impairing the obligation of contracts.” That echoes what the U.S. Constitution says.
It’s Trump, of course, who DeSantis must defeat in the Republican primaries if he runs for president. Trampling on Disney is to show how fearless and resolute he is. But that’s not all it shows. It also tells the nation and the world that DeSantis has dictatorial instincts, unbounded arrogance, the thinnest of skins and no self-restraint.
Floridians already knew that when he suspended Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren for his statements on abortion laws.
More political targets
The DeSantis administration now threatens to suspend Leon County’s elected school superintendent, Rocky Hanna, who has criticized the governor’s policies, and the elected state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties, Monique Worrell, is fearful about her future.
Other Republicans worry about what the Disney vendetta says about their party’s image as an ally of business and about Florida’s potential to attract other corporations to invest in Florida and contribute to their campaigns. Sen. Marco Rubio called it “problematic.”
Denying the obvious, DeSantis insists that it’s only about policy, not retribution, and that it’s Disney’s lawsuit, not his vendetta, that is “political.”
If threatening to build a prison near the Magic Kingdom and impose toll road barriers on guests and employees isn’t political, nothing is.
Through brute political force, DeSantis has bullied many of his critics into submission, but Disney fights back. Its lawsuit, filed by world-class law firms, is written in plain English suitable for quotation in opposition advertising.
“It is a clear violation of Disney’s federal constitutional rights — the Contracts Clause, the Takings Clause, the Due Process Clause and the First Amendment,” the lawyers wrote, “for the State to inflict a concerted campaign of retaliation because the Company expressed an opinion with which the government disagreed.”
The Citizens United precedent, they said, applies the First Amendment “with particular force to political speech” by a corporation.
As partial proof that DeSantis retaliated against Disney over the company’s choice to speak out, the lawyers cited DeSantis’ own writing in his new book, “The Courage to Be Free.”
The lawsuit carries a warning to others who might cross Florida’s dictator but who might not have Disney’s deep pockets when the state comes at them for expressing their own views.
‘Never back down’
“In America,” the lawsuit says, “the government cannot punish you for speaking your mind.”
Whether that’s true is before Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee, who hasn’t hesitated to rule against DeSantis on other First Amendment issues (DeSantis has fared better with a federal appeals court in Atlanta).
But it’s a corporation that’s the injured plaintiff this time, and not just any corporation. It’s an iconic brand whose animated characters are beloved by millions worldwide.
Does DeSantis really think he deserves to win this fight?
An insight into his motive is in the name of a purportedly independent Super PAC actively pushing his undeclared campaign for president. It calls itself “We Never Back Down,” a slogan used in the first TV ad urging his election.
Someone who claims to never back down is boasting that he’s never wrong.
That’s a bad enough attitude for a governor. Imagine it in the Oval Office.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at .
