After several months of fighting With the lawyers for the Walt Disney Company, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis doesn’t seem to realize he’s being outgunned. He has shown that he is willing to use all inside his arsenal to punish a corporation that opposes “Don’t Say Gay” law, including safety laws for theme park passengers.
On April 17, the orlando sentinel reported that the governor announced he would introduce a proposal that strips Disney of “special privileges” that allow the corporation to inspect the safety of its own theme park rides and self-report injuries sustained at those rides, instead of being inspected by the Florida agricultural agency (as are state fairs these days). according to one Sentinel reporterparks like Universal, Legoland and Sea World would still retain exemptions from safety regulations. my city reached out to the governor’s office to ask why Disney was singled out, but did not receive a response at press time.
This move is objectively a good thing for consumers. Florida regulators have been trying to reform passenger safety laws for years, as current rules allow theme parks to handle injury reports themselves. This led to incidents like Universal Orlando tagging a broken neck sustained at one of their racing games as “numbness” and a child’s broken bones as “foot pain”. If government regulators start to inspect Disney attractions, the megacorporation will be subject to more independent oversight. Sorry, though, if you visit any other major theme park in Florida – your chances of appealing for cyclist injuries will be less.
Senator Geraldine Thompson praised the initiative for raising safety standards for Disney attractions. “We want people to know that the attractions in Florida are safe,” she said. Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson felt the proposal did not go far enough. “Where a person is injured should not determine how the State responds. Everyone should have to play by the same rules,” he said.

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Despite the good things about the proposal, it sets Florida back decades. DeSantis is not doing this out of a sense of responsibility to his constituents, he is doing it to hurt queer people. He wants to send a strong message to corporations in Florida: If they oppose his homophobic laws, he will single out his business for major government regulation. Let a Republican governor turn a good proposal into something he sucks at.
There has already been a lot of public debate about whether or not this proposal will pass. As Twitter likes to say, you’re getting beat up on dating retweets. “If I were the governor of a state that depends on generating a lot of theme park tourism revenue, I might not go out and broadcast to the entire country the fact that none of our major theme parks are subject to the attractions safety laws. tweeted an out-of-state observer, who was not the first to recently learn that amusement park rides in Florida are not regulated. Others joked so big law firms they’re about to make a ton of money off suing DeSantis.
DeSantis is even taking L’s from other Republicans. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie criticized the Florida governor for punishing a corporation. “I don’t think Ron DeSantis is a conservative based on his actions toward Disney,” he said in a statement. interview with Traffic lights. “Where are we headed here now, that if you disagree in this country, the government can punish you? To me, that’s what I always thought liberals did. And now all of a sudden here we are participating in this with a Republican governor.”