
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wants the state’s pension fund manager to take action against Bud Light because it “breached legal duties owed to its shareholders” when the company decided to enter into a partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. DeSantis accuses AB InBev, the parent company of Bud Light, of associating with “radical social ideologies.”
Related: Having Learned Nothing from the Disney Feud, DeSantis Picks Another Unnecessary Fight
While Governor DeSantis can’t simply sue the company for making what it believed was a business decision, he can urge the state’s pension fund manager to sue on behalf of the recipients of that pension. The Florida Pension System owns 682,000 shares of AB InBev, worth around $46 million. It is a slight drop in the bucket of the billion-dollar pension fund.
DeSantis wrote in a letter to Lamar Taylor, the interim director of the State Board of Administration, which manages Florida’s retirement funds for public employees:
We must prudently manage the funds of Florida’s hardworking law enforcement officers, teachers, firefighters, and first responders in a manner that focuses on growing returns, not subsidizing an ideological agenda through woke virtue signaling
Since this controversy and the boycott of Bud Light, AB InBev’s stock has dropped from $66 a share to $58, costing the pension fund approximately $5.5 million.
But then there is DeSantis’ biggest nemesis: the Walt Disney Company. Gov DeSantis and Disney are currently suing each other in Federal Court, but if DeSantis is urging Florida’s pension fund to sue Bud Light, why not the Disney Company? The Florida Pension fund holds $234 million worth of Disney stock.
Fox News host Jessie Waters asked DeSantis if they planned to take similar action against the Walt Disney Company, Governor DeSantis responded, “I don’t know that we’d be the right one to do it.”
This is not the first time DeSantis has threatened to use the Florida Pension Fund to sue companies he believed were involved in “woke capitalism.” In early 2022, he threatened Twitter if they didn’t sell the company to Elon Musk. Twitter was eventually sold to Musk, and Gov DeSantis announced that he was running for the Republican Nomination for President on the social media platform.
Florida’s pension fund manages $235 billion for retired public employees. It remains to be seen if the Florida governor’s lawsuit against Anheuser Busch InBev goes anywhere. Still, we know that DeSantis’ legal fight against the Walt Disney Company will continue.
We will continue to update this story at Disney Fanatic.