Florida Republican Gov’t Officials Bend Over Backwards To Tell Everyone That, Yes, Absolutely, They Are Punishing Disney For Its Speech

We had mentioned just how pathetically ridiculous it was that the Florida legislature was considering stripping the already unconstitutional Disney theme park exemption fully from the unconstitutional social media bill that was passed, with the help of Disney, just last year. And on Thursday, as expected, the Republicans in Florida's legislature went ahead and approved that change, as well as another one, stripping Disney of a special provision in Florida law that effectively gives it a kind of sovereign power over all of Disney's land in Orlando.

So a few quick points on this: (1) the social media bill is dumb and unconstitutional, but the theme park exemption was just the unconstitutional icing on an unconstitutional cake, which only served to highlight just how unconstitutional the whole thing was, so stripping it away is performative nonsense. Disney doesn't deserve an exemption, but it also doesn't deserve to have the government punish it for its speech. (2) Same deal with the Reedy Creek Improvement District" setup, which probably shouldn't be a thing for Disney. But, again, that's no excuse to swipe it as punishment. But, most importantly (3) all of the Disney stuff is a misdirection smoke show. Florida politicians, and especially Ron DeSantis want everyone to focus on the faux outrage over Disney, rather than the main purpose of the extra legislative session: to even more excessively gerrymander the state's districts to completely wipe out two heavily Black districts. That's the real issue here.

However, gerrymandering is less of a Techdirt topic than free speech, so I did want to go back to the Disney thing. Over the last few months, certainly, we've called out politicians, both Democrat and Republican, for this extremely unfortunate trend of threatening companies with potential legislative punishment in response to their speech. Now, most of the time, the politicians (and their often vocal supporters) try to explain that it's okay if all they are doing is passing a legislative change that should happen. However, we've disagreed time and time again: even if you like the legislative proposal, the fact that it's being done as punishment for speech represents a serious 1st Amendment issue.

At least in most of those cases, though, the politicians in question weren't quite so dumb as to publicly say that they were doing this entirely as retaliation for speech. It's usually more of a correlation thing, where the company will do something dumb that politician X doesn't like, and then politician X immediately announces these performative, grandstanding legislative plans that would punish the company - but they don't directly say they're doing it for that reason.

But, this is Florida. And Florida, boy, they do stuff differently down there, don't they? And in this case, it means that Florida's Republican politicians are literally bending over backwards to give Disney all the evidence they need to run to court and get these legislative changes declared unconstitutional retaliation. They're not even trying to do the silly little dance where they pretend there are legitimate reasons for these legislative removes. First up, there was Rep. Randy Fine, when asked by the press if this was retaliation, he just outright admitted of course it was:

Desantis' lap dog Rep. Randy Fine says that Disney must be punished for not behaving property. It's time for them to remember that we are not CA. They are a CA company. And we are not interested in their CA values here in this state." pic.twitter.com/FCHE7wx5bS

- Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) April 20, 2022

Specifically, he compares this to when he punishes his kids for acting up," which is just going to play great in front of a judge:

But here's the issue, when my 14-year-old or my 10-year-old ask for special privileges? They behave! And they don't expect those special privileges if they act like jerks. So Disney is learning that they are a guest in this state.

So, yeah, great. You're saying that you're retaliating against the company for acting like jerks" by... speaking mildly out about legislation they dislike. Or, more specifically, here's a politician flat out admitting that he's punishing a company for its political speech.

But it gets worse. Florida's Lt. Governor Jeanette Nunez, who earlier in this stupidly ridiculous culture war flat out claimed that Disney's executives have no right to criticize legislation by duly elected legislators" and stated directly that she and Governor DeSantis won't stand for it." So, she had already made it clear that she didn't believe the largest employer in her state even had the right to criticize politicians (spoiler alert: they absolutely do have that right, because contrary to whatever Florida's GOP thinks, the 1st Amendment and free speech is actually a thing).

However, just to drive the point home about how unconstitutional this retaliation is, and the fact that the ONLY reason it's being done is because of the company's political speech, Nunez doubled down on Newsmax (of course) on Thursday, and when asked if Disney took back what it said, would Florida reverse course on this new legislation - she said it would!

Newsmax host Eric Bolling: "Is there an opportunity for Disney to change their mind and say we will disregard this whole 'woke' agenda...and would the governor then say, 'fine, you can keep your status but we're gonna keep an eye on you now'?"

Florida Lt. Gov: "Sure!" pic.twitter.com/5E8UKGDVjF

- Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) April 21, 2022

I mean the whole segment is stupid, but Newsmax's Eric Bolling (last seen here filing a SLAPP suit against a reporter) asks a stupid question and Nunez just flat out admits that it's entirely about Disney's speech:

Bolling: Is there an opportunity for Disney to change their mind and say, we will disregard this whole woke' agenda.' We'll go back to what we originally dealt with, the state of Florida, and would the governor then say, fine, you can keep your status but we're gonna keep an eye on you now'? How does this play out for Disney? A lot of people like Disney and they don't want to not like Disney any more.

Nunez: Sure! And we've all been to Disney, those of us with small kids have been to Disney. But they have changed their mantra. They have changed what they espouse. It used to be family values. It used to be entertainment that was age appropriate. And now, based on their own admission, they have a not-so-secret agenda to indoctrinate our youth with topics that are very inappropriate.

First off, that's absolute nonsense. I mean, the only thing Disney indoctrinates" kids into is the idea that parents need to take out a 2nd mortgage to afford to take their kids there. But really, just the fact that Nunez responds Sure!" to the idea that if Disney changes its mind, the whole thing might go away - and that the reason for doing this is because of the things the company espouses," means this is an exhibit should Disney decide to go to court over this.

This is why we keep calling out politicians who threaten companies over their speech. Because as they get away with it, it only escalates and escalates. We're going to see a lot more of this kind of nonsense, and the only way to get it to stop is for the courts to smack down these kinds of things for what they are: the government punishing companies for their political speech.

If you want more details on what these bills actually mean for the state of Florida (it would be an absolute disaster), I cannot recommend anything more than Sarah Rumpf's deep analysis of the impact of the attack on Disney. It quotes tons of Florida experts, including Republicans, admitting that if Disney loses its status, it would wreak havoc on the state's finances. Also, just the fact that the government is doing this seems likely to scare off businesses from moving to Florida. Miami has been trying hard to set itself up as a tech hub the last few years, but what tech company wants to move there when DeSantis has made it clear he'll punish you any way he can if he doesn't like what you say?

I don't think we've ever said anything nice about Disney here, and I don't think it necessarily deserves the two benefits that the Florida government gave them in the past at all. But the motive here matters. Making these moves as direct retaliation for Disney's speech violates the 1st Amendment.