Of course they have the right to say what they want, we all do, but with that can come consequences as well. Disney should just stay in their lane regardless of their positions on things outside running their company. They have enough problems to worry about right now before they create new ones.
The 1st amendment is supposed to prevent what you described, as freedom of speech is an innate right
exclusively from governmental punishment.
Florida has no legal right to punish a company for its political views (especially not the execs themselves), and saying Disney could’ve avoided this enables tyrannical governments to abuse their power.
If you have to walk on eggshells to not displease the government—like Disney would‘ve had to towards DeSantis—then you’re in a dictatorship my friend. It’s how China works, or Russia, or any authoritarian state.
This applies to any political view, so if this was California punishing a conservative company exclusively for their freedom of speech (like criticizing a law or a politician), it would be equally effed up and deserve an outcry.
And it’s not like DeSantis or many Florida legislatures are even pretending to act like it isn’t related to Disney’s response to the “Don’t Say Gay” law. They’re in many cases outspoken about it.
If this was Florida going after Disney’s business practices with no 1st amendment rights being attacked we would not even be having this conversation. That is the ONLY reason Florida is going after Disney: because they chose to use their 1st amendment rights and the government there disagreed with them.
If Florida wants to help Floridians and actually hold Disney accountable in a legal manner, perhaps they could focus on stricter labor laws to combat the ways that Disney abuses the present ones to rip-off their employees, or wage new taxes towards the tourism sector to increase education funding per student (Florida has lower funding than the national average per student). Those are real issues.
This is in contrast to Google, Twitter, or Facebook from determining what they want to allow on their platforms. They are private companies that can do whatever they want. There are no 1st amendment protections because it wasn’t written to protect you against companies.