ORLANDO, Fla. (CN) — The state-backed oversight board suing The Walt Disney Company over last-minute development agreements asked a Florida judge on Tuesday to quickly decide the case without a trial.
In its motion for summary judgment, the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District argued there is “no genuine dispute” that Disney’s development agreement deals with a former board, which effectively gave the entertainment giant control over the district where the theme park is located, did not follow proper public notice procedures.
“These agreements were the product of backroom dealings in the face of imminent and sweeping legislative reform,” the 28-page court filing states. “And they were Disney's eleventh-hour attempt to use the [previous] board — which Disney had controlled for decades — to insulate itself from the authority of the incoming board.”
The Central Florida Tourism Oversight District filed the lawsuit in May, three months after Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature renamed the district and the governor handpicked a new board of supervisors.
But before the previous board members left, they passed agreements with Disney that allowed the company to control the district, effectively neutering the governor’s new board.
The Central Florida Tourism Oversight District contends that Disney and the outgoing board did not have legal authority to assign development rights within the district, which includes two municipalities.
“The agreements do not merely freeze in place existing land development regulations applicable to Disney's property,” the court filing states. “Instead, they substitute Disney for the district as the final authority on all land use decisions for all landowners within the district (including the District itself) for the next 30 years.”
The board also claims Disney did not mail meeting notices about the development agreement to all property owners in the district, including a Four Seasons Resort.
The motion comes almost a month after Orange County Circuit Court Judge Margaret Schreiber rejected Disney’s request to dismiss the lawsuit.
In her order, Schrieber said the validity of the agreements “is clearly a question of great public importance.”
“They contradict the Legislature’s policies toward the district and, if valid, would permit Disney to control all development rights and land use regulations in one of the most heavily visited areas in Central Florida,” she wrote. “These issues implicate matters of the state’s sovereignty and are of great interest to its economy and citizenry.”
The quarrel between Disney and the state stems from the corporation’s opposition to the state’s Parental Rights in Education law, known more commonly as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, which bans the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity topics from kindergarten through third grade.
Disney heavily criticized the bill, which DeSantis signed into law in March 2022, and vowed to end any political contributions to state lawmakers.
The governor responded immediately, attacking Disney as a “woke corporation” and directing the GOP-controlled Florida Legislature to remove Disney’s self-governing status that was in place for more than 50 years.
After the former Reedy Creek Improvement District quietly passed the development agreements, the new board voted to nullify the deal. Then, DeSantis announced a series of proposals to wrest control of the district from Disney, including placing tolls on roads within the district in addition to new taxes and state inspections of the theme park’s monorail. At one point, noting that the state has several miles of undeveloped land adjacent to the theme park, the governor bounced around the idea of building a prison abutting the district.
Disney responded in turn with a federal lawsuit accusing DeSantis and the board members of a “targeted campaign of government retaliation — orchestrated at every step by Governor DeSantis as punishment for Disney’s protected speech.”
In an interview with CNBC on Monday, DeSantis said he has “basically moved on” from his squabble with Disney.
“So what I would say is — drop the lawsuit,” the governor, who is running for the Republican nomination for president, said he would tell Disney CEO Bob Iger. “Your competitors all do very well here — Universal, SeaWorld. They have not had the same special privileges as you have.”
A Disney spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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