- Disney has asked about 2,000 employees to relocate from California and be based at a new campus in Florida.
- But the $1 billion Lake Nona campus was canceled after about 200 workers had already been relocated.
- Two of the employees sued Disney, claiming they felt they had to return to California for job security.
Two Disney employees sued after the company asked them to relocate from California to a new campus in Florida, but then rescinded the request.
Last May, Disney scrapped plans to build a roughly $1 billion campus on Lake Nona in Orlando as the company scrambled to cut costs since Bob Iger returned as CEO. At the same time, Disney and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis were at odds over a Florida law that would have limited teaching about gender identity and sexual orientation in public schools.
About 2,000 jobs, primarily from the company’s parks, experiences and products divisions, were set to move from one of its offices in Glendale, Southern California, to the new campus, which has been under construction since 2019.
Disney Chairman Josh D’Amaro told employees in an internal email last May that at least 200 employees had already been relocated to Florida before the project was canceled.
Two of those workers are now suing Disney for damages.
Maria de la Cruz, vice president of product design, and George Fong, creative director of product design, filed a class action lawsuit against the entertainment and theme park giant in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday.
The lawsuit claims that Disney told employees in August 2021 that their jobs would be moved to the Lake Nona campus and “unequivocally” told them they would lose their jobs if they refused to relocate, and gave them three months to make a decision.
According to the lawsuit, De La Cruz and Fon told Disney in November 2021 they would be relocating to the new campus, and both sold their California homes and bought new ones in Orlando — including the home Fon grew up in, which they said forced them to sell.
According to the lawsuit, Disney told employees in June 2022 that delays in completing the project had pushed back the deadline for the relocation to Florida to 2026. After the relocation to Florida, De La Cruz and Fong worked at Disney’s Kissimmee campus, the lawsuit adds.
But then, in May 2023, Disney told employees that the Lake Nona plan was canceled. The lawsuit said employees had until the end of 2023 to decide whether they wanted to stay in Florida, and that if they wanted to return to Disney’s California offices, they had to relocate by the end of 2024.
According to the lawsuit, De La Cruz and Fong decided to return to California because they believed it was important for them to have job stability, but De La Cruz has not yet moved there.
But by this time the real estate market had changed: After Disney canceled the project, home prices in the Lake Nona area fell.
Meanwhile, rising mortgage rates and home prices in Los Angeles have made it “impossible” for Disney employees to purchase homes in the Los Angeles area comparable to those sold there just a year or two ago, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit adds that Fong also moved to a “significantly” smaller home.
The lawsuit alleges that Disney “solicited employees through false representations, intentional misrepresentations, concealment and negligent misrepresentations.” The lawsuit alleges that Disney misrepresented the Lake Nona campus to workers in order to encourage them to relocate.
Disney did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Correction: June 24, 2024 — An earlier version of this article misstated Ron DeSantis’ title. He is Florida’s governor, not a senator.
