Disney Litigators Take Their Turn Beating The Hell Out Of Ron DeSantis With New Federal Lawsuit

'Hey hey! See you in Court, motherfu...' (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Not content to let the transactional and land use attorneys have all the fun, Disney litigators have stepped up to take a turn at the Ron DeSantis pinata, filing a lawsuit against the governor in the Northern District of Florida. As they say in the Disney Parks, "Have a Magical Day, Ron."

The 77-page filing, signed by O'Melveney's Dan Petrocelli and Adam Losey of Losey PLLC as local counsel, with O'Melveney's Jonathan Hacker and WilmerHale's Alan Schoenfeld also joining the signature block, alleges multiple constitutional violations against the Florida governor and his cronies and seeks declaratory and injunctive relief.

As with the land use depantsing DeSantis suffered a few weeks ago, this all comes back to the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the local government overseeing Disney's land holdings around the Walt Disney World Resort.

After irritating DeSantis by announcing that it would try to minimize murdering its guests rather than lend performative support for his anti-vaccine policy, Disney pushed the Republican presidential hopeful by expressing disappointment in the state's "Don't Say Gay" law.

In -- for lack of a better term we'll go with the one invited by the complaint -- retaliation, DeSantis tried destroying Reedy Creek (before someone pointed out that this would put Florida taxpayers on the hook for massive amounts in outstanding bond obligations), before settling on taking over the Reedy Creek board and populating it with new members like this guy who thinks tap water makes people gay.

With a crackerjack crew like that, you'll be not at all surprised to learn that they never bothered to perform their most basic legal duties. Failing to check the fully transparent public notices that the prior board was handing over all the entity's authority to Disney until the death of King Charles III's last presently living descendent, the new board showed up in charge of an entity with no authority at all.

Honestly, how could a guy like this fail so badly?

Unwilling to pull an Elsa and let it go, DeSantis came back with a law to allow the new board to rescind the duly executed deals made by the old board. As competent attorneys, we warned DeSantis that this had the drawback of being comically illegal. As incompetent attorneys, his folks went ahead with it anyway, and his new board voted to nullify the contracts this morning.

This brings us to the present suit!

The first cause of action addressing the Contracts Clause issue we flagged before. Article I, Sec. 10 of the Constitution says "[n]o State shall ... pass any ... Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts." The Framers thought any future economy required explicitly assuring businesses that sign deals with state and local governments that they weren't going to end up getting cheated when Rhode Island pulls a Sheriff of Nottingham and just refuses to honor their deal.

Which is totally what Rhode Island would do if left to its own devices and we all know it.

The complaint next raises a takings clause violation. The Fifth Amendment says "[N]or shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation" and if the new board could abrogate Reedy Creek's existing deals with Disney over its own land, making that land less valuable to Disney, it would amount to a taking. Disney obviously prefers it not come to this, but wants a declaratory judgment that Florida needs to fork over big bucks if it ever succeeds in mangling these deals.

Good luck building your competing sad roller coaster when you're broke! What am I talking about? Well...

Describing what his administration would do with land taken from Disney's control, he mused, "People are like: 'What should we do with this land?' People have said, maybe create a state park, maybe try to do more amusement parks, someone even said, like, maybe you need another state prison. Who knows? I just think that the possibilities are endless[.]" Governor DeSantis warned, "I look forward to the additional actions that the state control board will implement in the upcoming days."

Yeah, no way anyone will be able to convince a court that this is simply retaliatory!

Unrelated to this suit, but can we just take a second to remember that this all started with DeSantis accusing Disney of not caring about child safety because it objected to a law banning the acknowledgment that some people are gay. Because openly toying with housing a bunch of prisoners (including, presumably, pedophiles) on the border of a children's park seems like a much better child safety plan.

There's also a due process claim, as the state passed a law narrowly tailored only to mess with Disney and not only failed to assert a legitimate state interest in this move, DeSantis does the opposite! A little more than a week ago, this utter dumbass was publicly building a record that the state didn't even have a plan for what it might do with this land.

Here's the thing: 2024 isn't yet close enough that DeSantis had to run into this Disney buzzsaw this quickly. He could've just sat back, figured out some cockamamie plan for building some deeply needed state park because the state has never properly honored, I don't know, some Confederate dirtbag that his constituents like. Then he could've built a fake case that the park just HAD to be there. And his people would maintain disciplined yet coy messaging that they are appalled that anyone would think this is retaliatory, "this is about honoring General C.G. Blisterbottom and his heroic fight to keep Florida enslaved!" or whatever. And it might be transparent enough to lose in court but it could be remotely plausible at least.

There are people out there who bill this guy as the "smart Trump" and I think I'm offended on Trump's behalf.

Finally, the complaint rounds out with a couple of First Amendment claims alleging that the state of Florida is infringing on Disney's free speech right to have an opinion on the anti-gay legislation. One count says the state is doing this by messing with the contracts and the other says the board constitution already did this. My prediction is that 90 percent of the mainstream media coverage will focus on these claims, because the First Amendment is sexy and something they cover in journalism school. These are strong and important claims. But, you know, there's a reason Disney put those other claims first -- those are the paths of least resistance to getting today's "nullifcation" undone.

Will Disney win? Well, it's early and we've not seen the DeSantis team's response yet and it's hard to judge a case just on the complaint.

And also yes.

Full complaint on the next page...

Earlier: Disney's Lawyers Are Better Than Ron DeSantis's Lawyers
Ron DeSantis Sticks It To Woke Disney With Hilariously Unconstitutional Law Banning Contracts
Harvard Law's Ron DeSantis Flunks Disney's Contract Issue Spotter
O'Melveny's Dan Petrocelli Weighs In On Publishing Industry Antitrust Suit

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you're interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.