Disney has detailed the “final straw” that lead to its decision to fire Gina Carano in a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the actor in February.
In Tuesday night court filings, the company argued it had the “constitutional right not to associate its artistic expression with Carano’s speech,” and that her lawsuit should be tossed on First Amendment grounds.
Carano was fired from the “Star Wars” spin-off “The Mandalorian” in Feb. 2021 after she reposted a message from an Instagram account likening the treatment of contemporary conservatives to Jewish people in Nazi Germany.
The Instagram post Carano reposted, cited in the suit, read: “Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”
The came after Carano received significant criticism for previous social media posts mocking trans rights, criticizing the COVID vaccine and questioning the results of the 2020 election.
After the Feb. 10 post, the motion stated that “Disney had enough” of Carano’s inflammatory statements.
“To publicly trivialize the Holocaust by comparing criticism of political conservatives to the annihilation of millions of Jewish people—notably, not ‘thousands’—was the final straw for Disney,” the court filing read.
That same day, Disney put out a statement severing tires with Carano, calling her words “abhorrent and unacceptable.”
Carano filed suit against Disney, LucasFilms and production company Huckleberry Industries earlier this year, accusing the companies of wrongfully retaliating against her for expressing political views that did not align with the companies’ own views.
In her suit she also alleged sex-based discrimination, citing how Disney did not take action against “Mandalorian” co-star Pedro Pascal or original “Star Wars” lead Mark Hamill for statements they made criticizing Donald Trump and his supporters.
Upon filing suit in February, Carano announced Elon Musk would be paying her legal costs.
Last August, the tech exec announced he would foot the bill for any employees who allege they were fired for posts made on his platform X, formerly Twitter.
Since getting the boot by Disney and LucasFilms, Carano has linked up with right-wing media operation The Daily Wire, which helped back her 2022 Western, “Terror on the Prairie.”