6/24/2023 0 Comments Mickey mouse outlineHe said after passage that he didn’t believe the language was necessary, even though his staff was involved in late negotiations over wording. After weeks of consideration, legislators in the hours before passage added a carve-out to the bill to protect Disney, which offers streaming services and has large Florida operations.ĭeSantis signed the bill that included the Disney provision. In 2021, DeSantis signed a bill that sought to punish tech companies for removing statewide candidates in Florida from their platforms - a major legislative priority for him. Ramaswamy said DeSantis signed “a last-minute exception into an anti-discrimination law for anyone who also operates a theme park more than 25 acres in Florida,” benefiting Walt Disney Co. ![]() Supreme Court, after lower courts blocked the law’s implementation on First Amendment grounds. The fate of the 2021 tech platform law now rests with the U.S. In 2023, Florida lawmakers, with DeSantis’ support, passed bills that eliminated other carve-outs for Disney, including requiring state inspections of the theme park’s monorail service and overhauling its special district. Related: DeSantis slammed a special Disney carveout. Later, DeSantis said he considered vetoing the legislation because of the carve-out, though the Tampa Bay Times reported on emails showing that DeSantis’ staff was involved in last-minute negotiations over language that Disney was proposing for the bill. “I think there were concerns about things that I didn’t quite think that bill was even going to impact,” DeSantis told reporters. Prior versions of the bill lacked such references.Īfter the bill passed but before he signed it, the News Service of Florida article characterized DeSantis as having “distanced himself” from the Disney carve-out during remarks to reporters. The amendment containing the language was submitted on April 29, 2021, the same day the full bill passed both chambers. Ramaswamy was also correct to label the change as a “last-minute” provision. In other words, Ingoglia said, the exemption aimed to ensure that Disney+ “isn’t caught up in this.” “And in the definition, it hits a threshold where, quite frankly, Disney+ winds up meeting that threshold.” Blaise Ingoglia, R-Spring Hill, who sponsored the bill in his chamber, told reporters, according to a May 7, 2021, report by the News Service of Florida. ![]() “The idea is to make sure that we’re capturing social media companies,” state Rep. There was little mystery at the time that the provision about theme park operators was designed to protect Disney, specifically its streaming service, Disney+. This sparked a legal back-and-forth that remains unresolved. DeSantis then pushed the Legislature to approve a measure that stripped Disney’s special governing status from an area that includes the Walt Disney World resort. That was the year Disney opposed the Parental Rights In Education Act, which critics labeled the Don’t Say Gay bill. Although we heard back from Ramaswamy’s team, DeSantis’ office did not respond to inquiries for this story.ĭeSantis distanced himself from the Disney provision after signing it May 24, 2021, according to news reports, and he has shown the company little love since 2022. We found that Ramaswamy’s description of history is largely correct. I prefer to get to root causes rather than doing political stunts.” So, I think that undermines the credibility of his crusade. ![]() That’s crony capitalism.”ĭeSantis is “now railing against crony capitalism,” Ramaswamy said, yet DeSantis “was the one who actually passed that into law for the case of Disney. They wrote into (it) a last-minute exception into that law for anyone who also operates a theme park more than 25 acres in the state of Florida. “Now, here’s the funny dirty little secret of that. “It said if you operate internet companies, this includes streaming services like Disney does, that you can’t engage in viewpoint discrimination. “So, Florida passed this political anti-discrimination statute, which I applauded at the time,” Ramaswamy said. Ramaswamy was referring to a provision of SB 7072, a legislative priority for DeSantis that prohibited social media companies from “willfully deplatforming a candidate” and defined such an action as “an unfair or deceptive act or practice.”
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