Ron DeSantis Again Claims Immunity From Disney Lawsuit Over Theme Park District; Former Governors Side With Company In Friend-Of-The-Court Brief | CPT PPP Coverage

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Ron DeSantis’s attorneys say that The Walt Disney Co. lacks standing to sue him in the company’s federal lawsuit over the Florida governor’s moves to strip the company of control of a special district that covers its Orlando theme parks.

DeSantis’s legal team also contends that the governor has sovereign and legislative immunity from the litigation, in which the company claims that its First Amendment and other constitutional rights were violated by the governor’s actions. Disney claims that the DeSantis-led effort to install his own appointees to the special district was in retaliation for the company’s opposition last year to a parental rights law, which detractors call the “don’t say gay” bill.

DeSantis is seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed. In the governor’s latest brief, (read it here), his attorneys argue that the governor and another state official, the secretary of the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, do not enforce the laws at issue in the case. The attorneys wrote, “Disney must do more than generalize: It must show that the State Defendants have specific, formal power to enforce the challenged laws, such that an injunction against them would ‘be effectual.’” They argue that DeSantis’s power to appoint board members to the special district and his “purported control” over their actions is insufficient to establish standing. The governor’s legal team also referred to the lawsuit as a “more a glorified press release than part of a legal document.”

In its lawsuit, Disney also named as defendants the DeSantis-appointed board members of the special district, now called the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District.

In their brief (read it here), the board members’s attorneys argued that the case belongs in state court. After Disney filed its lawsuit, the board sued the company in a Florida court, seeking to invalidate a set of development agreements that Disney reached with the special district in the final weeks before state law was changed to strip the company of its control. A judge last month declined to toss out the state lawsuit.

The board’s attorney, Charles Cooper, wrote in the brief that the Disney’ controlled special district “lacked any authority whatsoever” to enter into the development agreement.

Cooper wrote that the Constitution “does not entitle Disney to a local government that functions essentially as the company’s wholly owned subsidiary, nor does it grant Disney a right to undermine the state’s attempt to end that corrupting arrangement.”

Last month, Disney argued that DeSantis’s claims of lack of standing and immunity “have no application here.” “The Governor seeks to evade responsibility for his actions on a narrower ground, asserting that a governor cannot be held officially liable for implementing, administering, and enforcing state laws that punish residents for political statements violating a state-prescribed speech code,” the company’s legal team, led by Daniel Petrocelli, wrote in their brief.

Earlier this month, a group of former governors and state officials filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, siding with Disney (read it here). The officials, including former Minnesota Governor Arne Carlson and former New Jersey Christine Todd Whitman, both Republicans, wrote that DeSantis “improperly employed the executive powers of his office, together with a compliant legislature, to punish [Disney] for taking a public position contrary to his own.”

“That course of action – seeking to silence and punish political opponents for nothing more than their dissent – goes well beyond the proper limits of political debate or the appropriate use of the power and position of the governor’s office,” they wrote. “In Amici’s view, the Governor has thrown down nothing short of a direct challenge to the founding principles of this country.”