Last week, I told you about the brief that Florida’s new Central Florida Tourism Oversight District (CFTOD), which the state legislature put in place to replace the former Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID), filed urging a federal court to abstain from or dismiss Disney’s lawsuit against Gov. Ron DeSantis and the CFTOD board.
That brief argued that the dispute between Disney and Florida was a state matter, not a federal one; that the 11th-hour covenants and agreements the RCID board enacted on its way out the door were never valid to begin with; and that Disney was making a baseless First Amendment claim in the lawsuit.
We haven’t heard any news on that brief, but the CFTOD isn’t giving up on asserting that it is the rightful governing authority over the property and surrounding area.
The CFTOD board’s attorneys filed a motion on Tuesday in the state lawsuit against Disney, moving for summary judgment on five of the nine counts in the suit. The 28-page motion begins by declaring, “For each of these counts, there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact, and the District is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.”
Related: The Battle Between Florida and Disney Rages On
The motion details the reason for the suit: those restrictive agreements and covenants that the RCID board attempted to enact in order to allow Disney to maintain control over the district even after RCID had been replaced by CFTOD. The motion recounts:
After a public hearing, during which the District heard presentation from counsel regarding the illegality of the Agreements, the District adopted legislative findings detailing the legal defects in the Agreements and concluding that the Agreements are void ab initio [from the beginning]. Disney, however, continues to insist that the Agreements are valid and enforceable, thereby creating doubt about the District’s ability to govern.
Consequently, the District filed this lawsuit seeking a declaratory judgment that the Agreements are void and unenforceable and an order enjoining Disney from enforcing them.
To put it simply, the motion asserts that the court has all the information it needs to enter a judgment in favor of CFTOD with regard to five counts. The first of those five counts alleges that Disney failed to provide a public hearing before enacting the agreements; public hearings are required under state law because Disney isn’t the only property owner in the district.
The second count maintains that Disney failed to follow proper procedures in putting the agreements in place, stating that “a local government cannot enter into a development agreement on an ad hoc basis, as RCID did here, but instead must establish and follow a pre-existing set of procedures and requirements unique to that local government that provides consistency and transparency in the approval process.” The third count insists that Disney didn’t have the jurisdiction to enforce the agreements in the two municipalities located within RCID: the cities of Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista.
The fourth count states that Disney violated the Florida Constitution when it attempted to issue bonds for capital projects without seeking the approval of voting residents within the district, while the fifth count charges that RCID sought to privatize governmental authority by “substitut[ing] Disney for the District as the final authority on all land use decisions” in violation of state law.
“That Disney, a private entity, effectively governed itself through RCID for decades does not change the fact that RCID was a local government,” the motion concludes. “As such, RCID was required to comply with Florida constitutional, statutory, and common law in exercising its governmental functions. The undisputed facts show that RCID failed to [do] so in several key respects that render the Agreements void and unenforceable as a matter of law.”
Just as in the federal lawsuit, we’ll watch and see how this one unfolds. The state of Florida isn’t giving up on holding Disney accountable for its abuses of quasi-governmental power.
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