Disney Argues Firing The Mandalorian’s Gina Carano Is Fair Use of Its First Amendment Rights
Carano was removed from the Disney+ series after she shared a social media repost that the corporation said “trivialize[d] the Holocaust,” the company said
Disney is citing its First Amendment rights as its reason for firing Gina Carano from The Mandalorian.
The corporation filed a motion, obtained by PEOPLE, on Tuesday to argue that Carano’s controversial Holocaust repost on social media was reason enough to fire the actress from her role on the Disney+ series. The filing states Disney has “a constitutional right not to associate its artistic expression with Carano’s speech.”
Carano, 41, sued the company for firing her after a series of social media posts “blaming pandemic-related closure orders and vaccine mandates for causing widespread suicides and murders, attacking the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential election, and mocking people who identify their pronouns to show support for transgender rights,” Disney’s filing says.
However, the “final straw” for the company was a repost that “publicly trivialize[d] the Holocaust by comparing criticism of political conservatives to the annihilation of millions of Jewish people,” according to the filing.
Citing past court decisions, Disney argued “that a state cannot force an employer engaged in speech to speak through an employee whose own views or public profile could compromise the employer’s own message.”
On Wednesday, Carano shared a podcast interview with the Sage Steele Show explaining her decision to sue the company for wrongful termination. “Every once and a while, a big corporation needs to get straight up kicked in the nuts,” she said in the clip reposted on her Instagram Stories.
Another moment in the interview saw Carano comparing her political posts to those of her Mandalorian coworkers. “All of my costars were voicing their opinions very, very strongly,” she said. “Politically and loudly, and made much more aggressive comparisons than I ever did. Then here I am, a female, expressing my voice, which I never did before.”
She added, “I started using my voice because that’s how concerned I was.”
Some Star Wars fans also spoke up to ask for Carano’s removal from the Disney+ series, in which she played a bounty hunter named Cara Dune. The hashtag #FireGinaCarano began trending on X (formerly Twitter) shortly after her Holocaust comparison repost. Upon her firing, a spokesperson for LucasFilm told PEOPLE: “[Gina’s] social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
The Mandalorian returned for season 3 without Carano explaining her absence as her character’s promotion to the Special Forces of the New Republic.
