Disney Argues the Studio Had the Right to Fire Gina Carano Under the First Amendment

Gina Carano played the role of Cara Dune in the Star Wars series The Mandalorian throughout seasons 1 and 2. She was poised to return for the following seasons, but just over three years ago, Disney Studios fired Carano after she took to social media and compared the treatment of modern-day conservatives to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany.

Carano filed a lawsuit against Disney Studios, who owns LucasFilm, arguing that the company unlawfully retaliated against her for expressing her personal political views, which were at odds with Disney’s preferred ideology.

Disney’s lawyers filed a motion on Tuesday to throw out the lawsuit, arguing that it has “a constitutional right not to associate its artistic expression with Carano’s speech.”

The case touches on a hot-button controversy over speech rights on social media. Elon Musk, the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, announced last August that he would pay the legal bills of employees who had been fired for their posts on his platform. He later agreed to fund Carano’s lawsuit against Disney.

Carano had faced significant pushback for earlier social media posts, in which she strongly objected to COVID restrictions, questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election, and refused to show support for trans rights. According to her lawsuit, Disney forced her to have a 90-minute Zoom meeting with GLAAD, the LGBTQ rights organization, after she posted that her pronouns are “boop/bop/beep.”

But for Disney, the Nazi post was “the final straw,” according to the company’s motion. The company argued that the post trivialized the Holocaust by referred to “thousands” of Jews, not “millions,” and by likening their experience to those of contemporary conservatives who face scorn on social media.

“Disney had enough,” the motion states.

The company put out a statement the same day saying it had no plans to hire her in the future, and that her comments were “abhorrent and unacceptable.”

Carano sued under a California law that prohibits employers from retaliating against employees for political activity.

In its motion to dismiss, Disney argued that there is a broad exception for companies whose business is to engage in speech, such as newspapers and entertainment companies. To support its argument, the company invoked a law review article and a commentary written by one of Carano’s attorneys, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh.

“Employers that speak must necessarily speak through their employees; and when an employee or prospective employee says things, even off the job, that would undermine the employer’s message, the employer must be able to distance itself from the employee,” Volokh wrote in 2022.

It sounds like this is going to go back and forth for a while, but I don’t think Carano is ever going to return to a project at Disney.

via: Variety