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Comment by AndrewUnmuted | Hacker News Reader

A corporation being granted the permission of owning an entire chunk of the American public's land and taking over all local and state governance for itself is also rather unconstitutional.

It's sophomoric and clownish of people to assert constitutionality upon an issue such as this one. It's unconstitutional all the way down.

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> A corporation being granted the permission of owning an entire chunk of the American public's land and taking over all local and state governance for itself is also rather unconstitutional.

Is it? What provision(s) of the constitution does it violate?

The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1 - equality under the law. Why should disney be exempt from property taxes? From state taxes? What gives Disney Corp the right to influence the policies of Florida whey they do not subject themselves to those same policies?

Florida's Supreme Court ruled in 1968 that the Reedy Creek Improvement Act did not violate any provision of Florida's constitution. To apply the Federal constitution, a federal court case requires there to be an aggrieved party (and Florida state judges likely won't/can't revisit this to apply US constitution). Which leaves just Florida, which has no standing to challenge its own law after being enjoined by its own legal process, and leaves Disney which only gains from the contortions of the State of Florida and would also not challenge. All residents of Reedy Creek are Disney employees and their children, a major disincentive for any of them to be the political activist and challenge it, they are poorly paid and their rent is cheap ($75/month for space if using a mobile home).

The Florida State Legislatures and the Florida Executive Administrators disagree, which is why they are removing their special tax exemption status. Disney should not and cannot influence Florida's policies when they (and their employees) are exempt from the very policies they influence. No taxation, no representation. If they want their free speech, they need to pay for it like the rest of us.

okay.

I really am amused by the power of being able to have lawyers that understand the law better than the people that wrote or passed the law. I think Disney has that power. Its not that they necessarily understand it better although that can be a factor, its that they can warp realities with unrelated variables to create their desired reality.

Given that this law went from draft to law in under 96 hours, it's hardly surprising that the implications were not fully reviewed or understood by the legislature. Further, a number of the points being discussed here were brought up in conversations before the law was passed, so it's not like the legislators couldn't have, or shouldn't have known--they just chose to ignore the issues rather the spend time to understand and address them.

> The Florida State Legislatures and the Florida Executive Administrators disagree

Again they do? With a quick search I can't find any statement made by either the legislature or the administration that the arrangement is unconstitutional. Yes, they are attempting to repeal it, but simply repealing it doesn't imply unconstitutionality. In fact I think we can safely infer that they don't given that there is no attempt to revoke similar arrangements with stadiums and other such situations in which private businesses get a variety of advantages not available to the average business or taxpayer.

> which is why they are removing their special tax exemption status.

You are going to need to provide a citation to back up the assertion that Disney is somehow tax exempt. Disney receives no special tax exemptions resulting from the RCID, that I am aware of. Disney paid over $780 million in local, county and state taxes in FY 2021. And Florida law does not allow counties to charge it's residents different property taxes. That is why the residents of Orange and Osceola counties are facing a 20% property tax increase if the RCID is dissolved: the counties cannot simply charge Disney a higher tax rate than the rest of the county property owners.

> If they want their free speech, they need to pay for it like the rest of us.

Free speech, as defined in the first amendment, is a right afforded to all citizens of the United states. That right is not predicated on paying anyone anything. That's why it's a right. It's not transactional: a homeless person has the same first amendment rights that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have. Corporations, like Disney, have protections under the first amendment due to "personhood" enshrined in "Citizens United" and other laws.

Your arguments fly in the face of the first amendment's core precept--that the right of free speech is not a privilege only afforded monied landowners or government. It is an inherent right of every citizen to freely criticize government without fear of retribution and to seek redress from government harm, regardless of financial status.

They DO pay the taxes! That’s the point. This district controls resources and Disney alone pays for it. If it is dissolved, the state pays it, and that’s the issue. Disney saves $1Bn in debt payment because the debt is owned by the district that they’re the only taxpayer of.

The state doesn't, the taxpayers of Orange and Osceola counties pay for it.

> A corporation being granted the permission of owning an entire chunk of the American public's land

Disney owns the land that RCID operates. It's not public lands and most, if not all of it, was bought from private landowners during the '60s. The term "public lands" refers to government-owned property. Sometimes public lands are loaned, licensed, or leased to private entities (e.g., for logging, oil-drilling, public services like gas stations, etc.) but that's not the case here.

> taking over all local and state governance for itself is also rather unconstitutional.

Florida has specific legislation allowing entities to take on portions of local, county and state governance as part of it's Special District laws. 1844 entities have been granted these rights, including Disney. See https://floridajobs.org/community-planning-and-development/s...

Genuine question: how do you figure it’s unconstitutional?

Don’t states have pretty broad sway in how they manage their municipalities? It’s not like this is the first time a company owned a company town

edit: also it seems like they mostly took over local governance - fire, sewer, cops, trash, etc. I haven’t read anything about them not being subject to the state laws of Florida

As noted elsewhere in this thread: the special district laws and the RCID, specifically, have survived constitutional review by the Florida Supreme Court. The state certainly understands that these laws we deemed constitutional.

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