We’ve written plenty over the past couple of weeks here at PJ Media about The Walt Disney Company (TWDC) and its woke stance in response to Florida’s new Parental Rights in Education law. The Mouse has generated tons of controversy, but do Disney’s actions and rhetoric constitute discrimination? One conservative legal group thinks so, and they’ve sent a letter to Disney management telling them so.
America First Legal (AFL), a group founded by Stephen Miller, a former aide to President Trump, sent a letter to TWDC Chair Susan Arnold. In the letter, senior counsel Reed Rubenstein says that Disney’s efforts to stop the Parental Rights in Education law could be in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, Florida’s Civil Rights Act, and California Labor Code sections 1101 and 1102, reports Fox Business.
“The decision of The Walt Disney Corporation to promote the introduction of age-inappropriate sexual material in kindergarten classrooms, including radical gender ideology, and to fight the democratically-elected government of Florida in order to achieve this end, jeopardizes the financial future of the company and its shareholders in service of an extreme political agenda,” Miller said to Fox Business. “The Board of Directors has a fiduciary obligation to ensure it fulfills its duty of oversight, and should provide answers to its shareholders without delay.”
The letter argues that Disney is placing itself at risk of losing customers and shareholders, along with potentially facing legal action, if the company has violated the law.
Related: Disney Cast Members Who Don’t Buy Into the LGBTQ Agenda Make Their Voices Heard
“Apparently, the Company’s executives have chosen to discriminate, create a hostile work environment, and drive away creative, loyal, and talented employees; alienate the Company’s core customers; and violate the law, all for the purpose of advancing a very narrow political and social agenda promoting, inter alia, sexualizing content provided to young children,” the letter reads. “Accordingly, management has placed the Company’s assets, including its brand, reputation, and good will, at risk.”
Two weeks ago, an anonymous group of Disney cast members wrote an open letter to management in which they noted that not everyone at TWDC buys into the wokeness and LGBTQetc indoctrination that management seems to be in love with. They pointed out that TWDC has become a hostile workplace for those who aren’t woke.
“The Walt Disney Company has come to be an increasingly uncomfortable place to work for those of us whose political and religious views are not explicitly progressive,” they wrote. “We watch quietly as our beliefs come under attack from our own employer, and we frequently see those who share our opinions condemned as villains by our own leadership.”
The AFL mentions those cast members in its letter, noting that “the Company’s executives are engaging in systemic discrimination against religious believers and creating a hostile work environment to silence them and/or drive them out of the Company; unlawfully favoring some individuals and discriminating against others with respect to the terms.”
Has Disney violated the law? I’m no legal scholar, but I think it remains to be seen if TWDC has done anything illegal.
What I do know is that Disney is playing a dangerous game of alienating millions of customers and untold numbers of cast members who don’t feel safe expressing their deeply held beliefs. And AFL is putting Disney on notice with the letter. Good on them.
Read AFL’s letter to Disney here:
Disney Compliance Notice 04052022 PDF by PJ Media on Scribd
Join the conversation as a VIP Member