Federal Judge Disney has rejected Gina Carano's bid to dismiss her wrongful termination lawsuit against the company, with a trial now imminent between Mandalorian Actress and her former employer.
In February, Carano (backed by Elon Musk) filed a lawsuit against Disney after claiming she was fired from the Star Wars franchise following a series of social media posts that she claimed “minimized” the Holocaust.
In the lawsuit, Carano claims she was fired in February 2021 for sharing her conservative views on social media, while other stars — such as Mandalorian Star Pedro Pascal was not reprimanded and kept their jobs after expressing their liberal views.
Carano's controversial tweets compared the treatment of conservatives today to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, writing: “Because history is being 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 its neighbors hate them simply because they were Jewish. How is that any different than hating someone because of their political views?”
Two months after filing the lawsuit, Disney in April filed a motion to dismiss the case, arguing that “Carano’s decision to publicly downplay the Holocaust by comparing criticism from political conservatives to the genocide of millions of Jews—not just thousands—was the last straw for Disney.”
“The First Amendment protects Disney’s decision to disassociate itself from some speech but not from other, different speech,” Disney’s lawyers wrote. “The First Amendment requires that a speaker’s own decisions about the speech to which he or she is affiliated be respected, even if others consider those decisions ‘internally inconsistent.’ … Carano therefore cannot sue for discrimination by alleging that Disney has given different treatment to different statements by different parties.”
However, at a hearing on Wednesday, Judge Sherrilyn Pace Garnett dismissed Disney's lawsuit. Attempt to dismiss the claim, Hollywood Reporter He writes, paving the way for trial if the parties do not reach a settlement before then..
“Defendants are not members-only nonprofit organizations. Rather, Defendants are for-profit corporations that employ actors like Plaintiff, as well as administrative staff, to create television series and movies, as is the case in this lawsuit,” Judge Garnett wrote in her decision Wednesday, adding that Disney “has identified no evidence—in the complaint or otherwise—to substantiate its claim that it employs public-facing actors for the purpose of promoting ‘values of respect,’ ‘decency,’ ‘integrity,’ and ‘inclusion.’ Accordingly, Defendants’ invocation of the supposed harmful effects of Plaintiff’s ‘mere presence’ as one of Defendants’ employees lacks constitutional weight.”
