An important battle in the years-long war between Florida’s DeSantis administration and the Walt Disney Company has just ended, and Florida has won. Disney has agreed to a settlement with the Central Florida Tourism Oversight district in return for an agreement that the District will drop the lawsuit it is currently pursuing. After a year of legal wrangling accompanied by repeated media claims that the House of Mouse had trounced Ron DeSantis, the Governor has prevailed.
The Oversight District governs development in a large area of land controlled by the Disney corporation that was originally effectively chartered as a company town with a great deal of autonomy. Before DeSantis purged the District’s political appointees and replaced the members with his own people, the members of the District passed a series of last-minute measures that effectively returned the town to Disney government after a protracted erosion of the Company’s rights over the town.
The new settlement has voided those measures. Despite Florida’s agreement to drop the lawsuit, the resolution marks a more-or-less total defeat for the Mouse, which has also agreed to drop its lawsuit against Florida on the same matter. All claims and counterclaims will be dismissed by the court, and Disney’s current pursuit of a large public records dump from the State of Florida will also be halted.
The dispute started when Disney threw its weight into political controversies in Florida, violating its previous tradition of relative political disengagement within the state on matters not directly related to its business.
DeSantis’s associates took to social media after the announcement for what many would conceded is some well-deserved gloating. Among other things, quoted the most humiliating terminology in Disney’s concession they accused the media of malpractice throughout the affair.
The victory comes shortly after another victory in January, when a federal lawsuit Disney had been pursuing against DeSantis, accusing the Governor of free speech violations, was dismissed by the court.
