Judge Mark Walker has disqualified himself in the court case between Disney and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), citing a “relative within the third degree” who owns Disney stock.
DeSantis’s lawyers had filed a motion to disqualify the judge on different grounds last month, but that motion was denied by the judge on Thursday.
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“I must disqualify myself, because a relative within the third degree owns stock in Plaintiff’s parent corporation, which could be substantially affected by the outcome of this case. I am confident that my colleagues on this Court can preside over the remainder of this case and judge it fairly and wisely,” Walker said in the Thursday filing.
Walker was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida by President Barack Obama in 2012 and has served as the chief judge for the district court since 2018.
The case has been reassigned to Judge Allen Winsor, per the docket, who was nominated by President Donald Trump in 2019 and has served on the district court since then.
Despite disqualifying himself from the case, Walker called the motion by DeSantis’s team to disqualify him “without merit” and dismissed it in the same filing.
“Defendants’ motion is without merit. My use of hypothetical questions referencing facts related to this case, in an earlier case also dealing with the motivations of political actors (including some of the same actors here), cannot raise a substantial doubt about my impartiality in the mind of a fully informed, disinterested lay person,” Walker said of the motion to disqualify.
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The lawsuit was brought by Disney in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida in April, arguing DeSantis and other Sunshine State officials had pursued a “relentless campaign to weaponize government power against Disney in retaliation for expressing a political viewpoint unpopular with certain State officials.”
The feud between DeSantis and the company, which led to Disney’s central Florida district being restructured, stemmed from Disney denouncing the Parental Rights in Education Act, which DeSantis signed into law last year. Disney had previously maintained full autonomy over the district since its creation in 1967.
