Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis responds to a question during a press conference at the headquarters of the former Reedy Creek Improvement District that a newly appointed board now calls the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, Monday, April 17, 2023.
Joe Burbank | Orlando Sentinel | Getty Images
The board of supervisors picked by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to oversee Walt Disney World’s operations voted Monday to sue Disney in response to the company’s recent federal lawsuit alleging a campaign of political retaliation by the governor.
The panel, which challenged the company’s long-standing self-governing status when it replaced a Disney-backed board weeks earlier, unanimously voted to authorize a lawsuit in state court.
“This district will seek justice in state court here in central Florida where both it and Disney reside and do business,” board chair Martin Garcia said at a Monday morning meeting, where the legal fight was the sole topic of business. “Yes, we’ll see justice in our own backyard.”
Disney sued DeSantis last Wednesday and the oversight panel in U.S. district court in Tallahassee, Florida. The company asked to effectively restore its control over the special tax district that has allowed it to self-govern its Orlando-area parks’ operations since the 1960s.
The litigation escalated a fight that began more than a year earlier, when the entertainment giant criticized a Florida bill limiting talk of sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms.
The bill, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by its opponents, was passed by the state’s GOP-held legislature and signed by DeSantis in March 2022. Within weeks, the governor and his allies started targeting Disney’s special governance district, which at the time was called the Reedy Creek Improvement District.
Disney filed its lawsuit on the same day that the governor’s board members voted to undo a development deal that the company struck right before the DeSantis choices took over —…
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