FCC Chairman Brendan Carr on Thursday said that Disney has a history of allegedly discriminatory behavior, including hiring, promoting, compensating, and practices based on race, gender, and other protected classes.
Disney-owned ABC on Thursday asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to renew its licenses for eight broadcast televisions stations; however, it also attacked Carr over alleged free speech issues. Carr initiated the early license renewal process in April, citing Disney’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. The FCC chairman has spent much of his chairmanship reviewing companies that have “invidious” discriminatory DEI policies.
Carr said in a statement:
The FCC has been investigating Disney for over a year now after reports surfaced alleging that it had been discriminating against people based on race, gender, or other protected characteristics in violation of federal nondiscrimination laws. The allegations include concerns about Disney hiring, promoting, compensating, and providing or denying workplace opportunities based on protected characteristics. Disney only filed these applications to renew their ABC broadcast licenses after the FCC informed the company that their responses to the agency’s investigation had been disingenuous, deficient, and improper. Broadcast licensees have a unique obligation to operate in the public interest. The FCC will follow the facts and law wherever they may lead. [Emphasis added]
The FCC on Thursday issued a public notice that broadcasters which operate on the public airwaves should operate in the public’s interest. The FCC wrote:
As a result, spectrum is extremely valuable. Spectrum auctions routinely bring in billions of dollars for the same spectrum broadcasters use for free. In exchange, broadcasters are required to operate in the public interest of the communities they serve. This sets them apart from distributors that use other technologies, including the Internet or cable channels, that have no FCC obligation to identify and serve the needs of a particular community.
Unlike broadcast, those distribution technologies do not involve the government picking and excluding speakers. As a result of the government picking them, excluding others, and giving them free access to a valuable public resource, Congress charged the FCC with ensuring that broadcasters uphold their obligation as public trustees while using the public airways.
In Carr’s letter to then-Disney CEO Robert Iger in March 2025, he cited multiple reports of alleged discrimination by Disney:
In recent years, Disney made DEI a key priority for the company’s businesses and embedded explicit race- and gender-based criteria across its operations. Indeed, public reports — including ones based on whistleblower documents — paint a disturbing picture of Disney’s DEI practices. In at least one account, a Disney employee described the company’s decision to launch what would amount to racially-segregated affinity groups and spaces.
The company also publicly launched a “Reimagine Tomorrow” initiative, it would appear, as a mechanism for advancing its DEI mission. It also implemented mandatory “Inclusion Standards” across ABC, requiring, for example, that “50 percent of regular and recurring characters” be drawn from “underrepresented groups.”
These standards may have forced racial and identity quotas into every level of production — demanding that “50 percent or more” of writers, directors, crew, and vendors be selected based on group identity. It appears that executive bonuses may also have been tied to DEI “performance,” and ABC has utilized race-based hiring databases and restricted fellowships to select demographic groups.
During the FCC’s May meeting, he said, “There’s at least evidence that was indicating that Disney had created racially segregated spaces inside the company. There’s evidence indicating that potentially that they were hiring based on race and gender and protected characteristics, they were compensating, they were promoting, and they gave workplace opportunities that were different, and if the evidence does end up establishing that that’s a pretty serious issue, and you see it not just here at the FCC, but the EEOC and DOJ taking action.”