The Walt Disney Company continues to pay a steep price for its political war with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
Disney is now facing a class action lawsuit from some of its own employees who re-located from California to Florida for the planned Lake Nona campus in the Orlando area, only to find themselves with nowhere to go after Disney canceled the $1 billion project last year amid its beef with DeSantis over the state’s ban on gay and transgender indoctrination in schools.
Employees filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleging Disney fraudulently induced them to sell their homes in Southern California and move to Central Florida. The L.A. Times was the first to report on the suit.
In one instance, a Disney employee allegedly sold his home that had been in his family for generations.
The lawsuit reportedly seeks to represent “all current and former California Disney employees who relocated from California to Florida as a result of Disney’s announcement of the Lake Nona Project.” Plaintiffs are seeking unspecified punitive damages.
As Breitbart News reported, Disney pulled the plug on the $1 billion Lake Nona project last year at the height of the company’s feud with Florida. The mega-campus was expected to accommodate 2,000 employees, including those within Disney’s “Imagineering” department, with an average salary of $120,000.
Under former CEO Bob Chapek, Disney’s instigated the fight with DeSantis by publicly condemning Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Law, which prohibited schools from indoctrinating children in gay and transgender ideology,. Disney even vowed to fight to repeal the law, even though the company is headquartered in California, not Florida.
Even when Bob Iger returned to the helm, Disney persisted in its fight with the state. In response, DeSantis revoked Disney’s self-governing privileges in the Orlando area — a valuable perk that Disney had enjoyed for five decades. Lawsuits were filed on both sides, with a costly legal showdown in the making.
The feud generated non-stop negative press for Disney, sucking the company into the culture wars and inflicting incalculable brand damage.
This year, Disney waved the white flag by dropping its lawsuits in the so-called “Reedy Creek” dispute. Disney is now poised to invest up to $17 billion in Disney World in Florida, including opening a fifth theme park.
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