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The Walt Disney Company has filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed on behalf of Gina Carano, a conservative actress who has alleged she was wrongfully terminated from the Disney+ "Star Wars" show "The Mandalorian."
In a notice of motion and motion to dismiss, The Walt Disney Company, Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC and Huckleberry Industries (U.S.), collectively known as "Disney," announced they would move the United States District Court, Central District of California to enter an order dismissing Carano’s complaint.
Disney asked the Court to enter their order on June 12, 2024, or as soon thereafter as the matter can be heard, citing the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)86) and the First Amendment.
"Disney makes this motion on the grounds that Disney has a constitutional right not to associate its artistic expression with Carano’s speech, such that the First Amendment provides a complete defense to Carano’s claims," the document, obtained by Fox News Digital, states.
Disney has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit from Gina Carano. (Photo illustration by Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto/ Ethan Miller/FilmMagic/Getty Images)
The company compared its authority to a newspaper, which is entitled to broad deference in choosing which writers to employ to express editorial positions. They claimed their creative production enterprise is similarly entitled to decide which performers employ its "artistic messages."
Disney claimed that Carano engaged in public comments that "came to distract from and undermine Disney’s own expressive efforts." They said the "final straw" that led to Carano’s termination was a post that compared criticism of political conservatives to the Holocaust.
"Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children. Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?" Carano posted in February 2021.
More than two years later, Carano sued The Walt Disney Company "for millions in lost income" from wrongful termination and "discriminatory tweet."
"A short time ago in a galaxy not so far away, Defendants made it clear that only one orthodoxy in thought, speech, or action was acceptable in their empire, and that those who dared to question or failed to fully comply would not be tolerated," the lawsuit, funded by X Corp. said.
The complaint alleges that Carano was subject to harassment over her political views, which she publicly shared on social media, such as X.
Pedro Pascal compares the conditions of migrants at the border to concentration camps in Germany. (X/Screenshot)
Attorneys from Schaerr Jaffe, LLP, alleged this conduct violated California laws, particularly one that stated, "No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity."
Carano’s lawyers claim that Disney’s treatment of her stands in stark contrast to other male co-stars who engaged in controversial speech online, demonstrating "discriminatory treatment."
On August 16, 2017, her co-star Pedro Pascal published a post claiming then-President Donald Trump was a Nazi sympathizer.
Almost a year later, he compared the U.S. response to illegal immigrants to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany.
On September 18, 2022, "Star Wars" icon Mark Hamill posted a picture that compared Americans who support Trump to Nazis.
Hamill also compared Trump’s "Save America" slogan to The Third Reich.
A 2022 tweet from Mark Hamill that compared Trump supporters to Nazis. (X/screenshot)
"Disney also rehired ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ director James Gunn, a male, in 2019 after terminating him in 2018 for social media posts years earlier such as ‘I like when little boys touch me in my silly place,’ and ‘The best thing about being raped is when you’re done being raped and it’s like ‘whew this feels great, not being raped!’’ and ‘The Expendables was so manly I f–ked the sh-t out of the little p-ssy boy next to me! The boys ARE back in town!’" Carano’s complaint noted.
Disney claims that the First Amendment protects Disney’s right to protect its own speech from association with Carano’s own high-profile "controversial speech."
"Because the state cannot impose liability on Disney for making that decision, Carano’s claims should be dismissed," the motion to dismiss states.
"Carano evidently believes the other actors’ statements were sufficiently similar to hers to warrant identical concern from Disney, but under the rule of speaker’s autonomy, that determination is not for her—or a jury—to make. Rather, the First Amendment mandates deference to the speaker’s own decisions about what speech to associate with, even if others might consider those decisions ‘internally inconsistent,’" the document continues.
Disney did not return Fox News Digital's request for comment.
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