Actress Gina Carano arrives at the World Premiere Of Disney’s ‘Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker’ held at the El Capitan Theatre on December 16, 2019 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Photo: Image Press Agency via Reuters Connect
The Walt Disney Company filed a motion on Tuesday night to dismiss a wrongful discharge and sex discrimination lawsuit filed by actress Gina Carano, who was fired from the Disney+ series The Mandalorian for comparing the political divides in America to Nazi Germany.
Disney wants Carano’s lawsuit dismissed “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 Bob Iger-led company said the actress and former mixed martial arts fighter was fired from the Star Wars-based series in 2021 because she chose “to publicly trivialize the Holocaust by comparing criticism of political conservatives to the annihilation of millions of Jewish people — notably, not ‘thousands’ — [which] was the final straw for Disney.”
“The First Amendment protects Disney’s right to protect its own speech from association with Carano’s high-profile, controversial speech,” added the company in its motion this week. “Because the state cannot impose liability on Disney for making that decision, Carano’s claims should be dismissed.”
Disney is asking for a hearing on June 12 in federal court in downtown Los Angeles before Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett. Disney is a defendant in the case alongside Lucasfilms and Huckleberry Industries. The entertainment giant purchased Star Wars creator George Lucas’ Lucasfilm in 2012 for just over $4 billion.
Carano starred as bounty hunter Cara Dune in the first two seasons of The Mandalorian. In February 2021, not long after the second season of The Mandalorian finished airing on Disney+, Carano shared on social media a TikTok post that said: “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?”
Shortly afterward, Lucasfilm, which co-produces The Mandalorian, announced Carano’s firing from the show. It said her social media posts “denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.” A month later, Disney’s CEO at the time, Bob Chapel, explained that Carano’s views “didn’t align with company values,” including its “values of respect, values of decency, values of integrity, and values of inclusion.”
Carano filed a lawsuit in February 2024, claiming she was wrongfully fired and that her “words were consistently twisted to demonize & dehumanize me as an alt right wing extremist.” Her lawsuit is receiving financial support from X/Twitter and Tesla owner Elon Musk, who offered to pay legal fees for anyone who faces alleged discrimination because of their social media activity on his social media platform.
Disney said in its motion on Tuesday that it “had enough” after seeing Carano’s social media post about Nazi Germany. The company added that the actress “grotesquely trivialized the Holocaust as comparable to sharp political disagreements.”
Carano responded to Disney’s motion on Thursday.
“Disney has confirmed what has been known all along, they will fire you if you say anything they disagree with, even if they have to MISREPRESENT, MALIGN, and MISCHARACTERIZE you to do it,” she wrote in a post on X. “They are now on record letting everyone who works for them know that Disney will take any chance they get to control what you say, what you think or they will attempt to destroy your career. The First Amendment does not allow Disney to wantonly DISCRIMINATE, which is what they have done in my case and frankly have now admitted they did.”
