ON APRIL 22, 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill dissolving the Reedy Creek Improvement District, ending perhaps the most successful experiment in private governance in U.S. history. The bill ended an arrangement that turned a swamp on the edges of Orlando into the home of Walt Disney World, one of the busiest tourist destinations on Earth. The governor’s victory is not yet final—while the district was formally dissolved earlier this year, Disney attorneys quickly outfoxed DeSantis, delegating many of the district’s powers back to the company. The company is now suing to reverse the change altogether.
For all the media sound and fury over the duel between the would-be president and the Mouse, experts seem to agree that Disney will retain most of its longstanding autonomy when all the lawsuits are through.
Whatever your views of the “Don’t Say Gay” law that kicked off the DeSantis-Disney feud, or of the increasingly regrettable quality of the live-action Disney feature film reboots of its animated classics, DeSantis’ attempt to dissolve the district is a blatant effort to bully a private company because he disapproved of its constitutionally protected speech. At best, it reveals DeSantis as a culture warrior rather than a small-government conservative. At worst, it exposes DeSantis as a politician willing to toss out the rule of law and free markets to score cheap political points, in the lead-up to a Republican presidential primary in which he’s struggling to meet expectations.
For the most frivolous reasons imaginable, the fate of “the happiest place on Earth” now hangs in the balance.
‘A SHOWCASE TO THE WORLD OF THE AMERICAN FREE ENTERPRISE SYSTEM’
BY ANY REASONABLE metric, Central Florida was an odd place to build a theme park. When Disney selected Orlando as the site of Walt Disney World in the early 1960s, the city was a sleepy backwater of fewer than 100,000 residents lacking a dedicated civilian airport. (Today, Orlando International
