The Walt Disney Company has asked a Florida judge to dismiss the lawsuit brought against the company by The board members, specially chosen by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to oversee what was formerly known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the group that allows Disney to self govern its Orlando property at Walt Disney World.
The legal action is part of the ongoing feud between the governor and the entertainment giant after Disney publicly challenged one of the governor’s policies last year.
“Disney’s earlier-filed and earlier-served federal action is pending between substantially the same parties, and it involves substantially overlapping issues,” the company’s legal team said in its brief, filed on Tuesday. “In these circumstances, controlling precedents provide that the court lacks discretion to proceed with this case. Disney regrets that it is compelled to litigate these issues anywhere, but the federal action is the proper vehicle for first hearing the parties’ dispute.”
Disney believes the governor has a personal vendetta against the company, which is why they are seeking justice in a federal court instead of a state court.
Disney believes DeSantis overstepped his boundaries as governor.
“If the Court rejects the board’s claims on their merits and agrees with Disney that the contracts complied with any procedural and substantive requirements of state law, the board would still be prohibited from complying with them under the new state statute,” according to the company in its motion. “For the same reason, even if the Court found merit in the board’s objections to the contracts, any order to that effect would be pointless because the contracts would already be void under the new state statute. In short, any declaration about the contracts’ enforceability, voidness, or validity—either way—would be an advisory opinion with no real-world consequence. Trial courts in Florida are forbidden from issuing advisory opinions, and this case should be dismissed. … Faced with a newly hostile state administration, Disney aimed to protect its planned investments in Central Florida—including thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars in capital over the next decade—by executing two development contracts with the local government body that had managed the special district where Disney has been located for more than 50 years. Public notice appeared twice in a prominent Orlando newspaper, and there were two public hearings on the subject. Over no objection, the contracts were executed in early February.”
It is likely that there will be another motion asking that the defendants be allowed to proceed with their lawsuit. In fact, the governor and his team already filed a counter-lawsuit in state court. DeSantis and the new board have renamed the group the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District.
The new oversight board did not comment on Disney’s lawsuits.
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