Elon Musk’s Gina Carano Lawsuit Found a Loophole to Stick It To Disney

On the surface, actress Gina Carano’s lawsuit against the Walt Disney Company seems to be a pretty cut-and-dry First Amendment issue. Carano is alleging that Disney fired her from The Mandalorian over comments she made comparing conservatives in America to Jews during the Holocaust.

Related: Gina Carano Suing Disney/LucasFilm, Funded by Elon Must and X

Carano has the freedom of speech right to say those things on social media; however, the First Amendment protects her from government retribution, not from her employer. It’s a portion of the law that most people don’t fully understand. You can’t be arrested and persecuted for saying something awful, but you can be fired.

But X Owner Elon Musk, who is funding Carano’s lawsuit against Disney and LucasFilm, found a legal loophole that has the potential to seriously screw Disney. Her lawsuit against Disney and LucasFilm was not filed in Federal Court. Instead, she filed in California State Court, using a state law against the Walt Disney Company.

According to Bloomberg Law, under California’s Labor Code, an employee’s right to be politically active outside of their workplace without retaliation from an employer is protected. California is one of the few states that offers this type of Freedom of Speech protection, and this law has never been seriously challenged in court until now.

Deborah Widiss, an employment law professor at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law, said:

It’s a murky area, and it’s gotten much harder with social media which makes it so visible and blurs those lines in a way that when these doctrines were developed, you might be doing all kinds of things outside of work, but it was usually going to not be known to your employer. Now it’s very easy for it to be known to your employer.

So, that is one potential way that Elon Musk found to stick it to Disney. The other may be of their own doing.

Carano’s Sex Discrimination Claims

Besides her Free Speech lawsuit, actress Gina Carano is also claiming sex discrimination. As a part of this suit, Carano alleges that she was treated differently from her Mandalorian co-star Pedro Pascal and Star Wars legend Mark Hamill.

Understatement of the century. https://t.co/kzpFS0alkS

— Mark Hamill (@MarkHamill) February 23, 2024

Both men were employees of Disney and LucasFilm when Carano was fired, and both were politically active on social media at the time. While Carano alleges she was fired for having conservative viewpoints, Pascal and Hamill kept their jobs despite their liberal views.

As a part of her case, Carano’s legal team submitted a tweet by Pedro Pascal that compares former President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.

Grant Alexander, an employer-side attorney at Allen, Matkins, Leck, Gamble, Mallory, & Natsis, said:

Disney is going to have several issues because of the appearance of disparate treatment between Pedro Pascal and Gina Carano for really using the same social media platform and engaging in what appears to be political speech.

With her case funded by Elon Musk, Carano will definitely see the inside of a courtroom. Musk has vowed that he will not settle with the Walt Disney Company.

Today is an important day for me–I am filing a lawsuit against @lucasfilm & @Disney
 
After my 20 years of building a career from scratch, and during the regime of former Disney CEO Bob Chapek, Lucasfilm made this statement on Twitter, terminating me from The Mandalorian: “Gina…

— Gina Carano 🕯 (@ginacarano) February 6, 2024

That means, at some point, Disney will have to turn over documents related to Carano’s firing, including conversations between CEO Bob Chapek, LucasFilm President Kathleen Kennedy, and their underlings. There is also the potential for some of the current Disney CEO Bob Iger’s conversations to be turned over.

It is impossible to know what those communications will reveal, but they could potentially be embarrassing, at best, for Disney. At least for now, it appears that Elon Musk has found a way to screw Disney over, with potentially far-reaching consequences.

What do you think of Gina Carano’s lawsuit against Disney? Let us know in the comments.