Disney has been at the forefront of the woke movement in entertainment.
The company was hit with a nasty surprise it never saw coming.
And Disney’s CEO was in tears when the Trump administration announced this probe.
FCC to investigate Disney over its DEI policies
The corporate world has been scaling back or eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies since President Donald Trump was elected.
Disney is one of the few companies to stick with DEI during Trump’s Presidency.
The company’s shareholders rejected a proposal to stop participating in the left-wing Human Rights Campaign’s corporate equality index, a scorecard about how well a company does on LGBTQ issues.
Disney received the highest score possible in the Human Rights Campaign’s scorecard.
The company’s DEI policies have landed the company in hot water for potential discrimination.
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr announced that he was opening an investigation into Disney and its subsidiary ABC over potential violations of equal opportunity laws with DEI initiatives.
Disney CEO Bob Iger received a letter from Carr stating that the company needed to “end any and all discriminatory initiatives in substance, not just name.”
Carr asked for a list of all the ongoing DEI policies and initiatives at Disney and ABC.
He reminded Iger that the FCC and the Communications Act “prohibit regulated entities like Disney’s ABC from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, age, or gender.”
Disney used DEI policies to discriminate against workers
The FCC chairman pointed to Disney’s “Reimagine Tomorrow” initiative and inclusion standards as areas of concern.
“[Disney] also publicly launched a ‘Reimagine Tomorrow’ initiative, it would appear, as a mechanism for advancing its DEI mission,” Carr wrote. “It also implemented mandatory ‘Inclusion Standards’ across ABC, requiring, for example, that ‘50 percent of regular and recurring characters’ be drawn from ’underrepresented groups.”
Disney Television Animation executive producer Latoya Raveneau boasted about a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” during a 2022 Reimagine Tomorrow video meeting that was uncovered by conservative activist Christopher Rufo.
She admitted to “adding queerness” into Disney’s children’s programming.
Racial or identity quotas are illegal under federal anti-discrimination law.
“These standards may have forced racial and identity quotas into every level of production — demanding that ‘50% or more’ of writers, directors, crew, and vendors be selected based on group identity,” Carr noted.
Disney claimed that it was ending the Reimagine Tomorrow initiative, but Carr was skeptical that the company followed through with that.
Carr had a blunt warning for Iger about his company’s DEI policies.
“Promoting invidious forms of discrimination cannot be squared with any reasonable interpretation of federal law,” Carr explained. “Doing so only deprives Americans of their rights to fair and equal treatment under the law.”
Carr told Punchbowl News that he is serious about cracking down on DEI in the media.
Disney is currently dealing with a disaster after its woke live-action remake of Snow White became a box office bomb.
Now, the company has another controversy to navigate with the Trump administration targeting corporate DEI policies.
DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
