Disney claims it had ‘First Amendment right’ to fire Mandalorian actress Gina Carano over her trans tweets

Disney is arguing it had a First Amendment right to fire ‘Mandalorian’ actress Gina Carano after she posted tweets that were out-of-step with the trans-rights movement, and an image the company claims was controversial as it pertained to the Holocaust.

Carano sued the House of Mouse in February claiming the company broke the law then it retaliated against her for expressing personal political beliefs.

Attorneys for the mega-entertainment brand filed a motion on Tuesday to dismiss the suit, arguing the company has a ‘constitutional right not to associate its artistic expression with Carano’s speech.’

The actress’s suit is being funded by X-owner Elon Musk, who offered last August to fund lawsuits of employees who had been terminated for their posts on his platform.

Carano, 41, was fired in February of 2021 after she compared the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany to conservatives in modern America.

The post, which originated from another account, appeared on Carano’s story and read: ‘Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors … even by children.’

In quotation marks the caption then reads: ‘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?’

The words appear above a disturbing image of a woman in undergarments running from two young boys in Nazi Germany.

The actress had faced earlier pushback against her posts to social media about COVID-19 restrictions, to which she mostly objected, and the 2020 election, questioning Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden.

She also refused to signal support for transgender rights on her public social media profiles, with which Disney apparently took issue. 

According to her suit, the conglomerate forced her to sit through a 90-minute Zoom meeting with officials from GLAAD after she wrote ‘boop/bop/beep’ in her Twitter profile, instead of taking seriously the assignment of identifying her pronouns publicly.

In its motion, Disney says the Nazi post acted as the ‘final straw.’

The post, the company argues, trivialized the Holocaust by referring to ‘thousands’ of Jews, not ‘millions,’ and by likening their experience to those of modern American conservatives.

At that point, ‘Disney had enough,’ reads the filing.

The day her post went up, the corporation put out a statement calling her comments ‘abhorrent and unacceptable,’ and adding that it had no future plans to hire her on any projects.

Carano, who became something of a sensation among the conservative community on what was then Twitter, brought suit under the California law that prohibits employers from retaliating against employees for political activity.

Disney responded by arguing that there is a broad exception for organizations whose business it is to engage in speech – like newspapers. The company referenced a recent law article written by one of Carano’s attorneys – UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh.

‘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,’ he wrote two years ago.

Thus, argue Bob Iger’s fleet of legal minds, Disney was ‘entitled to protect its creative speech in the ‘Star Wars’ series from association with views Disney and many viewers (and potential viewers) considered offensive and contrary to Disney’s values.’

‘Carano’s presence as a prominent actor on ‘The Mandalorian’ interfered with Disney’s choice not to produce a show associated with her beliefs,’ they wrote.

The actress additionally alleged that the company discriminated against her on the basis of sex, citing the fact that Disney took no action after male actors Pedro Pascal and Mark Hamill posted material comparing followers and supporters of President Donald Trump to Nazis.

Disney argued that the standard it applied to Carano doesn’t matter.

‘The First Amendment protects Disney’s decision to dissociate itself from some speech but not from other, different speech.

‘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’ … Carano thus cannot stake out a discrimination claim by alleging that Disney accorded different treatment to different statements by different actors,’ they wrote.

Carano’s suit, filed in California federal court, alleges wrongful termination and discrimination, and demands that the court force Lucasfilm to recast her as well as pay her at least $75,000 in damages.  

Carano had played Cara Dune for the first two seasons of the hit show ‘The Mandalorian,’ which streams on Disney+.

According to the complaint, Disney and Lucasfilm harassed and defamed Carano for refusing to conform with their viewpoints. 

Carano argues that the entertainment giant turned a blind eye to her male costars who she claims put up offensive posts aimed at Republicans. 

She also claims she was required to meet with representatives of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination, which demanded a public apology from her.

The complaint states: ‘Defendants went so far as to try and convince Carano’s publicist to force Carano to issue a statement admitting to mocking or insulting an entire group of people, which Carano had never done. 

‘After she refused to issue the statement Defendants demanded, and Defendants rejected Carano’s proposed alternate statement, Defendants increased their harassment of Carano.’  

Carano says she was then told to meet with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and employees who identified as LGBTQ+. 

After declining to do so, she was terminated shortly after from The Mandalorian, as well as other Star Wars titles.