New Lawsuit Accuses Disney of Religious Discrimination

Disney is being sued for religious discrimination after Candace McGee, a Disneyland Security Lead, was fired over what her lawyers claim was “religious discrimination.” Ms. McGee had worked at the company for twenty-three years before being terminated due to comments on an internal social media platform. The lawsuit indicates that comments pointed at McGee were threatening, discriminatory, and out of line, but those employees received no punishment.

McGee is being represented by religious liberty attorneys Alan Reinach and Beth Mora.

The Plaintiff is suing for lost and future wages, benefits, bonuses, stock options, lost medical benefits, lost vacation/sick pay, other benefits, emotional distress, mental anguish, pain, suffering, humiliation, enjoyment of life, reasonable attorney fees, court costs, expert witness fees, and punitive damages.

What happened?

According to the lawsuit, Ms. McGee had issues with management and other employees over her Christian faith.

Several instances were cited, including,

• Being reprimanded for telling guests “Merry Christmas” during Disneyland’s Christmas celebration, where they profited from the holiday.
• McGee discussed religious beliefs with a peer. The other person filed a complaint, and she was reprimanded even though McGee claims some incidents in the complaint did not happen. The other person in the conversation was not punished or questioned about the alleged discrepancies. She was forbidden from discussing religion at work, even though no policy was given showing she was not allowed to do so.
• Interactions on the Disneyland internal social media platform Yammer, which the filing claims had “numerous discriminatory, harassing, and retaliatory posts made about religion, about McGee’s religious beliefs, and in retaliation for McGee’s posts sharing her strongly held religious beliefs.”

McGee argues that she felt threatened and distressed because she was not allowed to express who she was and what she believed, nor was she allowed to defend herself.

Ultimately, she was terminated in December 2022.

Yammer

The suit’s crux is the internal social media communications, which the Plaintiff believes caused her termination.

From the filing, it sounds like many of the issues started with Bob Iger’s comments on the Florida Parental Rights in Education Bill, aka the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Iger returned to the Walt Disney Company in November 2022, and during his “Town Hall” meeting with employees, he stated,

“This company has been telling stories for 100 years, and those stories have had a meaningful, positive impact on the world, and one of the reasons they have had a meaningful, positive impact is because one of the core values of our storytelling is inclusion and acceptance and tolerance, and we can’t lose that.”

After the meeting, the lawsuit stated that this caused a considerable bias against Christians within the company as many conflated the bill with Christianity.

This led to a post by a senior cast member known as C. Stephens, a Disney legal department employee, who posted a message that the following excerpt was taken from on November 28, 2022.

“…in general discourse, I’ve noticed that what most people seem to mean by “don’t be political” means not centering stories on women, people of color, LGBTQ+, non-binary, transgender and other marginalized communities, and sometimes, they don’t even mean putting any of the people in those categories in prominent roles, but putting them in films and shows at all….
I have long held the view that what many people want to brand as ‘political discussion is really just human discussion. Imagine how hurtful it is to be told time and time again that your very existence is a political matter, stripping you completely of your humanity….”

After this was posted, the lawsuit claims that C. Stephens received a positive response, with many fellow employees agreeing with the remarks. However, among the neutral comments were allegedly other comments that “directly or indirectly attacked religion, religious values, and placed the discussion in the context of a culture war pitting religion, perceptions concerning religion, and specifically Christianity against other views.”

“The Cast Members espousing these thoughts allegedly encouraged canceling opposing people and opposing views, often real or perceived religious views.”

According to the lawsuit, the company had diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that prohibit the “stereotyping” behavior the posts conveyed. Even Bog Iger’s statement about acceptance and tolerance was seemingly disregarded.

Instead of stopping the comments, which may have violated the same policies Ms. McGee was reprimanded for, they were allowed to continue to post.

The suit claims that even though Disney was notified, they never investigated the comments or issued warnings to those who violated their policy against discrimination. Nor did they try to “remedy” or “prevent” the conduct.

It reportedly escalated from there.

Mostly, it appears that other Cast Members were fighting amongst themselves over inferred transgressions. The talks became more heated until McGee finally responded.

The filing states that at one point, another Cast Member known by “RT” posted, “We are here to entertain them with wholesome movies and cartoons that the whole family can watch without trying to indoctrinate them.” To which another person, “R. Spang,” seemingly questioned the word “wholesome.”

From there, C. Stephens from legal once again interjected a “lengthy response challenging RT’s concept of “wholesome.” The suit claims that Stephen’s status as an employee of Disney Legal encouraged others to participate in the “discriminatory” behavior. Basically, it argued that it allowed fellow employees to think that if someone in legal could do it, it must be allowed.

Another incident happened where one employee indicated that “sexual content should be absent in children’s programming,” which set off another employee who took offense and claimed the comment was offensive.

Apparently, the comments continued against Christians, and Plaintiff felt “distressed by the overt attacks on her religious beliefs. She struggled to process the ongoing discussion in Yammer she viewed, which openly invited and permitted discriminatory, harassing, and retaliatory conduct against religion and religious persons without regard for the Defendant’s policies and rights of Cast Members.”

McGee finally commented on the thread and said “sexual content in children’s movies are NOT acceptable, ever.”

Other Cast Members took offense, inferring anti- LGBTQ+ theming, which is highly ironic given the Walt Disney Company themselves reportedly told Pixar to walk back any LGBTQ+ implications in “Inside Out 2”.

This interaction led to McGee citing scripture. R. Spang returned again to accuse her of siding with “murderers” and “abusers” and being a “threat” to their “existence.” Spang continued to escalate to the point that McGee reported the comments out of fear for her safety to which she was terminated and the other employees were not punished.

It wasn’t over yet.

Her direct manager asked McGee to come in and “talk.”  When she arrived, another manager and a human resources investigator, Sara Lutz, were present via Zoom. At this point she was told that she would be questioned and was able to bring in a representative. This questioning went on for 30-45 minutes. Where they repeatedly questioned McGee about her religious beliefs and comments she made.  She was reportedly questioned about other people’s comments that she had nothing to do with too.

From here the suit claims Lutz informed them that they would not be allowed to record the conversation in any fashion. Instead only she would be able to take typewritten notes.

Those notes were never given to Plaintiff for review or confirmation.

Another interview took place for about an hour.

Allegedly the accusations made against McGee came from another employee who decided she was talking about the same sex kiss in the film “Lightyear”, which McGee claims she didn’t even know about. The same accuser claimed that she would treat LGBTQ+ peers differently because of her bias, even though there was no evidence to back that up or any examples of her doing so in the 23 years she worked at the company.

They continued to investigate the Plaintiff even after termination.

Final thoughts.

As an outsider looking in, I see that there was a double standard regarding acceptance and inclusion. If everything stated in the complaint is true, it is concerning that Disney employees would go so far as to target someone for saying something similar to what other employees also said.

It comes across as a sort of “witch hunt” that aged very poorly, given the recent accusations made against Disney over walking back LGBTQ+ theming in their family films. It also looks bad given that Disney allowed Cast Members to dress as they identify and represent their beliefs in public-facing positions, but McGee was not allowed to say “Merry Christmas” during a Christmas event the company profited from.

We do not have all the comments in context and entirety to see the whole picture either.  But that’s for the courts to decide.

What do you think? Comment and let us know!