Disney Suing DeSantis

[Gondwanaland]

Just playing devil's advocate. The excerpt CD posted said that Disney was essentially self-governing, so that could be taken as similar to an embassy of another government. An embassy has it's own laws within another country or state. Same with Disney. It could be taken as a hostile government embassy attacking their host country. If say, a Russian Embassy in New York decided to start a public campaign directly opposing the New York, New York would be within their rights to close down the embassy and kick them out.

Yeah, no, not even remotely a comparable situation. Especially when literally all Disney did was suggest they didn't like a bill DeSantis was pushing, and spoke aloud about it using their 1st amendment rights.

[Terraceth]

Interestingly, the liberal Slate had an article arguing that Disney isn't exactly in the right here with its lawsuit:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...explained.html

On Wednesday, Disney escalated its battle with Ron DeSantis by filing a lawsuit to attempt to stop the Florida governor’s efforts to revoke the company’s control over the district it self-governs. The lawsuit is styled as yet another noble effort in Disney’s battle with DeSantis, and specifically as a fight for freedom of speech against DeSantis’ anti-LGBTQ censorship. The complaint leans heavily on First Amendment rhetoric, but free expression is not its lead theory of the case. Rather, Disney centers a claim that Florida violated its rights under the Constitution’s contracts clause by voiding agreements that would’ve preserved its right to self-governance as its main argument for retaining the right to its land and properties.

It’s easy to see why Disney’s excellent lawyers from big law firms WilmerHale and O’Melveny are trying to frame this through the lens of free speech: Federal courts are reluctant to strike down otherwise valid laws because they might be pretext for the suppression of speech. But this case is more about contract law than free expression. And by invoking the Constitution’s contracts clause, and leaning on it so heavily, Disney is playing with fire. There is a reason this provision has sat moribund for nearly a century: Interpreted broadly, it could give courts immense power to help corporations and employers escape regulation. The federal judiciary should not be handed another open-ended invitation to halt progress at the behest of the unscrupulous and powerful—which, free speech gestures aside, is what this is.

...

The consequences could be severe given the legal climate; the contracts clause cases just keep on coming. Hotels cite the clause to battle severance pay for workers and rehire of laid-off employees. Delivery apps used it to combat caps on the amount of “commission” cash they can extract from restaurants. Corporations deployed it to fight data privacy laws. Police unions have seized upon it to hobble disciplinary procedures and conceal records of misconduct from the public.

More detailed information is in the full article.