DeSantis's war on Disney

Politics & Elections
341

Given the deference the courts generally give the legislatures, and their typical avoidance of delving into legislative intent, it is most likely if this gets blocked legally it will be because of contract issues relating to the bonds. For a lot of good reasons there’s precedent and legal prohibitions against a State just “legislating away” its contract obligations, as otherwise the various individual States could sign contracts that seem really beneficial to the vendor, then pass legislation nullifying them. This would obviously cause a lot of commerce issues for the country as a whole, so unsurprisingly States cannot do this.

The best path to closing it out and avoiding the issues would be finding an eminent domain argument to seizing the bonds, meaning the State would then be allowed to take ownership of them from all of the bondholders, at current market value + possibly the future value of money value as well. That could pre-empt a contractual prohibition on early redemption.

The specifics of that would be complicated to say the least. While I had earlier speculated that it isn’t even certain Disney will care to contest this legally, I was not at the time thinking about the bondholders–it is highly likely some of the bondholders will challenge this in Federal court and that process will have to play out before the District’s legal status is finalized.

342

Politically it is worth noting that none of the legalese matters whatsoever. This is political grandstanding by Ron DeSantis and a rapt/pliant Florida GOP incapable of independent thought. DeSantis has received what he wanted–credit for going after a “woke” liberal company. It now no longer matters from a political perspective what happens to Reedy Creek, if it gets tied up in litigation for 5 years and the State eventually gives up its attempt to dissolve it, that literally has zero impact on DeSantis and he does not care. He never cared about actually dissolving the district, he cared about the politics, and he has already achieved his intended political goal.

Republicans have realized for a long time now that you can actually get credit with their virulent base simply by asserting they have done things, the fact of the matter doesn’t matter because understanding the facts is often bogged down in complicated policy issues or legal issues. If you’re spending time explaining something, you’ve already lost 75% of voters. Remember Trump’s wall and Trump’s repeal of Obamacare. The wall largely never got built and Obamacare never got repealed. Trump basically claimed he did both, and a large chunk of his voters when asked later in his Presidency appeared to believe the wall was mostly built and that Trump had “mostly” repealed Obamacare.

That’s because Trump won the information war on those topics even if he lost the actual political and legal battles on them.

343

Right, I concur. Look, even my cat knows this is DeSantis getting revenge on Disney for not supporting his homophobic platform.

But that would be hard to prove, and SCOTUS would shy away from it. But give them something solid, with dollars and cents, and they can cheerfully rule against it, all while pretending they are ignoring the large bigoted elephant in the room.

And maybe they could have Florida eat the bonds, but the taxpayers won’t sit for that shit.

344

You have it backwards. Freedom of speech exists only if it is respected in practice. The right to freedom of speech may exist when freedom of speech itself is not respected. For example, if the government actually retaliates against you for your speech, that does not mean you have no right to freedom of speech. And if your case is thrown out on a technicality, that does not mean you had no rights.

Could have. It depends on whether your theory of arbitrary & capricious action carries the day.

The First Amendment only comes into play if we’re talking about speech. If the government just doesn’t like you, like bad blood or racism, that doesn’t involve the First Amendment at all.

No, it wouldn’t. The Fourteenth Amendment protects you from state and local abridgement of the freedom of speech, I say in combination with the First Amendment, but some would say it is independent of the First Amendment. Either way the Fourteenth Amendment has only been recognized as encompassing freedom of speech since the twentieth century (Gitlow, 1919). For over a hundred years the states, as a matter of federal constitutional law, could criminalize criticism of the state. Yet the First Amendment still had value as a check on the federal government.

You are telling me that my argument is unconvincing because you have already assumed the conclusion. I argued that the burden is on Disney to prove that the legislature’s action is retaliation against Disney for protected speech, and that proving such would be difficult. If Florida’s action is, in the eyes of the law, political retaliation for protected speech, then the law cannot sanction it. You seem to take it as a given that the legislature was retaliating against Disney but as a matter of law this is something that must be proven.

No, I should not. I believe it is perfectly appropriate that the legislature should be given deference by the judges, and that Disney should shoulder the burden of proving they were retaliated against.

I think the special district law will probably end up being an acceptable exercise of legislative power but I haven’t followed the debt loophole linked by Fear_Itself in #318. More likely though I think it will be made moot before going into effect next year.

I think the apportionment map will be struck down by the courts and I’m not sure what will happen next.

I haven’t looked at the social media law’s theme park amendment in any detail.

~Max

345

Well, yes. But see trump did not win by appealing to the “Dems have a secret pedo club in the basement of a pizza parlor” crowd. He won by lying to the rust belt and appealing to the common man who wanted “change”.

The Q-anon vote won’t get you much. And Disney is insanely popular.

346

On a Disney podcast, one of the hosts talked to a couple of lawyers and while 1st (and apparently 4th) amendment arguments are fun, they are pretty far down the list on what Disney would point to to get the FL law thrown out. Contract Law is apparently the main thing and that is codified in the US Constitution and pretty sacrosanct.

Another interesting point he made was that apparently a bond rating entity downgraded Reedy Creek bonds specifically because of the FL law, but the kicker is they downgraded it because the FL legislature is interfering. This downgrade would affect ALL bonds in the state of Florida, not just Disney’s. Essentially, ‘the government is unstable/corrupt’ so if they can do this crap to Disney they can do it to anyone so ‘buyer beware.’ So that means higher borrowing rates for anything in FL.

ref: Jim Hill Disney Dish Podcast with Len Testa

347

Contract law is absolutely not codified in the U.S. constitution.

348

Private property is not codified in the constitution.

349

Okay. I’m only restating (probably badly) what was said in the episode.

350

The lawyers were almost certainly referring to the Contract Clause.

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

Here’s a quote from a Bloomberg article linked to earlier in the thread (thanks for pointing it oout, Discourse):

Both the U.S. and Florida constitutions place strict limitations on the government’s ability to impair its own contracts. Under the U.S. Constitution, a state can only impair an existing contract if the impairment is reasonable and necessary to serve an important government purpose. As early as 1866, the U.S. Supreme Court held that once a local government issues a bond based on an authorized taxing power, the state is contract-bound and cannot eliminate the taxing power supporting the bond. The Florida Constitution provides even greater protection from impairment of contracts.

351

So, DeSantis wants to raise taxes AND make it more expensive to borrow money in Florida.

352

To be fair, if you make it more expensive to borrow money you’ll almost have to raise taxes since most (all?) state constitutions forbid deficits.

353

I’m reminded of a bunch of 80’s family sitcoms where the plot is, for some reason, the kid or kids and the parents trade places, with the children now taking on the authority and responsibility of the adult.

Inevitably, they like the authority, but not the responsibility, and end up ruining everything, with the adults having to step in by the end of the episode to set things right again.

However, unlike those sitcoms, there are no adults to step in, and we are not in for a happy ending.

354

Yeah, without having heard the podcast my assumption is they were talking about this. It is well established law that the States cannot just legislate their way out of contracts. This shouldn’t surprise–the Federal courts even in the 19h century were very favorable to commercial interests and if States could do that it would create so much chaos a lot of business activity would be difficult to impossible to conduct.

There was a heritage going back to Hamilton where it was understood that for the United States to “work”, its “word” had to count on the international stage, this is why Hamilton made sure all the debts of the various Thirteen colonies were honored and eventually paid in full.

355

Then again really this is all about (a) the Trumpetista faction “proving” that they are not afraid to stand up to the “woke big business” and incidentally (b) a warning to Florida businesses who are NOT Disney, along the lines of “see this? We do this with Disney, imagine what we can do to YOU.”

356

Who knew having common courtesy meant being “woke” — I still don’t know what the heck woke means.

357

To the MAGA crowd, “woke” means anything sympathetic to black people.

358

You’re kidding me, right?

359

Yeah, that is a joke. Woke relates to sympathy for ANYTHING that republicans don’t like.

360

Woke is as opposed to sleep, I suppose. It’s an awareness as far as I can tell. Awareness- Republicans can’t stand that. It’s tantamount to being well informed about reality. Add it to the list of things Republicans apply hate towards.