DeSantis Lawyers Ask Judge in Disney Case to Recuse Himself
Lawyers for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida asked a federal judge on Friday to step down from a case brought by Disney, saying his comments in two unrelated court proceedings last year displayed a bias toward the company.
John Guard, the Florida chief deputy attorney general, made the request to Mark E. Walker, the chief judge for the Northern District of Florida, on behalf of Mr. DeSantis. Judge Walker is presiding over the early stages of a Disney lawsuit, filed last month, that accused Mr. DeSantis and a board that oversees government services at Walt Disney World of engaging in “a targeted campaign of government retaliation.”
In their motion to disqualify Judge Walker, Mr. Guard and lawyers for the five members of the board said two remarks from last year “could reasonably be understood to reflect that the court has prejudged Disney’s retaliation theory here, and therefore create significant doubts about the court’s impartiality.”
In both instances, Judge Walker brought up Disney in hearings for unrelated cases, briefly citing actions by Mr. DeSantis and his allies in the Florida Legislature against the company as examples of retaliatory conduct, according to the filing. Judge Walker made one of the remarks, at a hearing in a case involving intellectual freedom on college campuses, a day after Mr. DeSantis “publicly refuted” the notion that he was taking “retaliatory” action against Disney, the filing said.
Source: The New York Times
