Disney has filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District board in state court in Florida.
In the filing, Disney alleges that a land use bill, which Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) signed earlier this month, makes the lawsuit “moot,” per court documents.
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“A ruling in CFTOD’s favor would be pointless, and a ruling in Disney’s favor would be meaningless,” lawyers for Disney said in the filing. “Under the Florida Constitution, trial courts have no power to issue opinions that are at best advisory and lack any real-world effect on the parties’ rights. The case should be dismissed as moot.”
The filing also offers an alternative rationale for dismissal, arguing the court should stay the case under the priority rule due to the “substantially similar parties and issues” in the federal lawsuit Disney filed against the board and DeSantis.
“A stay under the priority rule is warranted here because jurisdiction attached in the Federal Action first and both actions involve substantially similar parties and issues,” the filing said.
The land use bill, SB 1604, included a provision to allow “an independent special district” to be “precluded from complying” with agreements made in the three months before the modifying of laws on how the governing body selects members. It also allows the new governing body to vote on readopting the agreements within four months of taking power.
The law was part of DeSantis’s promised “strong one-two punch” to nullify an agreement the previous board of the central Florida district entered with Disney, which undercut the power of the DeSantis-appointed board. The other part of the strategy included the board declaring the agreement void based on one of the “legal infirmities” in the accord.
Shortly after the board declared the agreement void, Disney filed a lawsuit in federal court arguing DeSantis and other officials had engaged in a “relentless campaign to weaponize government power against Disney in retaliation for expressing a political viewpoint unpopular with certain State officials.”
The lawsuit brought by the board in the Circuit Court of the 9th Judicial Circuit in Orange County, Florida, alleges Disney is trying to contest “people’s sovereignty” and further claims that the company’s “puppet government” had crafted an agreement that violated “Florida constitutional, statutory, and common law.”
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After the land use bill was signed into law, Disney added the new legislation to its federal lawsuit.
The battle between DeSantis and the company, which led to Disney’s central Florida district being restructured, stemmed from Disney denouncing DeSantis’s push for the Parental Rights in Education Act last year. Disney had maintained full autonomy over the district since its creation in 1967.
