Disney Cast Member Unions and Orange County Teachers Deliver 5,000 Petitions Urging Disney to Drop Its Property Tax Lawsuits
The Fourth of July weekend at Walt Disney World ended on a more serious note than fireworks. On Monday, July 6, unionized Disney cast members and Orange County public school teachers hand-delivered roughly 5,000 petitions asking Disney to drop its long-running property tax lawsuits against Orange County, arguing that money the school district has set aside for potential refunds to the company could instead go toward teacher pay.
Wilderness Lodge is one of the two resorts whose assessed value Disney successfully challenged in a June court ruling. Photo: Sam Howzit, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
What happened
The petitions were presented at 11 a.m., timed to a scheduled day of contract bargaining, by members of the Disney cast member unions UNITE HERE Locals 362 and 737 along with the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association. The unions say the delivery caps a months-long campaign that knocked on more than 65,000 doors across Orange County and drew hundreds of people to a series of town halls.
The argument
Here is the crux of it. Orange County Public Schools has set aside roughly $119 million in reserves to cover possible property tax refunds to Disney and other large commercial property owners if their assessment challenges succeed. The unions and teachers argue that if Disney dropped its lawsuits, a large share of that reserve would no longer need to be held back and could instead be spent on schools and salaries. They point to a proposed teacher raise of just 0.93 percent this year, alongside rising health insurance costs. As UNITE HERE Local 737 organizer Ella Wood framed it to Orlando Weekly:
Disney has the legal right to sue. They're not doing anything that they're not allowed to do, but they also don't have to.
The school district has signaled it would welcome the relief. Superintendent Dr. Maria Vazquez told Orlando Weekly that if the settlements end up costing less than the district reserved, the leftover money should go back to staff:
Our goal is then to put those money, those dollars back into [teacher] salaries.
Disney's position
The company maintains that challenging its property assessments is a legal right, contesting valuations it considers too high, and it has declined to comment on the union campaign. Disney has filed assessment challenges in Orange County annually since 2015, including roughly a dozen new complaints in December 2024 and another round in December 2025 covering its theme parks, hotels, and water parks.
The timing of the petition delivery is notable. On June 8, a circuit judge signed a final judgment in one of Disney's older cases, cutting the 2015 assessed values of Animal Kingdom Lodge and Wilderness Lodge by a combined roughly $44 million. According to Blog Mickey, that pushed Disney's cumulative assessed-value reductions across its settled cases past $215 million. Worth stressing: that figure is the reduction in assessed value, not a direct dollar-for-dollar tax savings or refund, and the actual refund amounts have not been made public.
The dispute sits at the intersection of Disney's labor relations and Orange County school funding. Photo: Gerard McGovern, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Why it matters
This is one of the thornier local storylines around Walt Disney World, tying together the company's labor relationships, its tax disputes with Orange County, and how much money reaches public school classrooms. Whether Monday's petitions move Disney is an open question, but the campaign has kept a spotlight on a fight that is usually waged quietly in courtrooms and county budget offices.
Sources
Image credits: Wilderness Lodge by Sam Howzit (CC BY 2.0) and Walt Disney World entrance by Gerard McGovern (CC BY-SA 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons. Photos are for context.
