Why Is Disney Suing Orange County Over Property Taxes?

Disney is suing Orange County over property taxes because it believes the county’s property appraiser consistently overvalues its theme parks and resorts by sweeping in the worth of intangible business assets, like the Disney brand, management expertise, and assembled workforce, that are not supposed to be taxed as real estate. The company argues this inflates assessments above the “just value” standard set by Article VII of the Florida Constitution, and it has filed fresh challenges nearly every year since 2015.¹

The Core Legal Argument

Florida law requires county property appraisers to assess real estate at its “just value,” which courts have treated as market value. Disney’s position in every one of these cases is that Orange County’s methodology crosses a line: instead of valuing the land, buildings, and other tangible improvements, the appraiser captures income and value that actually belong to Disney’s business operations.¹

A hotel is the clearest illustration. The building itself is real property. The revenue that building generates, though, depends on the Disney name on the sign, the people running it, the characters walking through the lobby, and the parks next door. Disney argues the appraiser is pricing all of that into the real estate assessment, and that doing so violates the state constitution.

In its December 2025 round of roughly 15 new lawsuits, Disney asked the court to apply an “appropriate appraisal methodology” and issue new, lower tax bills. The company has not publicly stated what it believes the properties are actually worth.² Those filings alone cover parcels with combined assessed values of more than $5.4 billion, including Magic Kingdom at $621.8 million, EPCOT at $794.6 million, Hollywood Studios at $639.4 million, and Animal Kingdom at $495 million.³

How a Court Has Tested the Argument

The argument has gotten its fullest airing in a long-running fight over the Yacht and Beach Club Resort. In a 2018 final judgment, Orange Circuit Judge Thomas W. Turner sided with Disney, ruling that the appraiser had improperly folded roughly $74 million in income from food, beverages, and other services into the real estate valuation. That income, the court found, was “ancillary” and attributable to intangible assets, and it had been “inextricably intertwined” with the real estate figure in a way that violated Florida law. Judge Turner cut the resort’s just value from $336.9 million to $209.2 million.⁴

Florida’s Fifth District Court of Appeal weighed in two years later. In August 2020, the appellate court agreed the original assessment was flawed but found the trial court’s own replacement numbers were not adequately supported by evidence either. It sent the case back to be reassessed by the appraiser under a compliant methodology.⁵

The dispute kept going. In September 2024, Judge Turner again ruled in Disney’s favor, calling the appraiser’s 2015 assessment “unconstitutional and invalid.”⁶ Disney then moved to recover roughly $500,000 it had spent proving its case.⁷ Property Appraiser Amy Mercado filed a notice of appeal in October 2024, and that appeal is still pending.

What Disney Has Won So Far

As of mid-2026, Disney has accumulated more than $215 million in total assessed value reductions through settlements and judgments across a decade of litigation.⁸

The largest batch came in June 2026, when Disney resolved six lawsuits covering the Animal Kingdom Lodge, Wilderness Lodge Resort, and BoardWalk Resort for tax years 2015 through 2020. The two lodges each got a flat 10% reduction, and BoardWalk got a 3% reduction, together trimming roughly $174 million off the assessed values. A court judgment that same week knocked another $43.8 million off the Animal Kingdom Lodge and Wilderness Lodge values for the 2015 tax year.⁹ Earlier settlements had delivered smaller reductions for the Art of Animation Resort.¹⁰ By 2021, Tax Collector Scott Randolph said Disney was already owed $7.8 million in refunds for tax years 2015 through 2019, with more expected.¹¹

Each settlement includes language stating that it is not an admission the appraiser’s methods were wrong and cannot be cited as evidence of just value for other properties or years. That matters because it forces Disney to re-fight the same argument each tax cycle rather than lock in a precedent that applies across its portfolio.⁸

The Appraiser’s Response

Mercado’s office rejects the premise. It says it uses “professionally accepted appraisal practices” and is legally required to assess at just value, meaning that reducing assessments below what it considers accurate would itself violate Florida law.¹²

The office has also pushed back in court on its own initiative. After the county Value Adjustment Board cut the assessed value of a Hilton DoubleTree hotel on Disney property by $4 million, Mercado sued in circuit court to overturn that decision, calling it “unlawful and invalid” and asking that the original $30.3 million assessment be restored.¹² Both Mercado and her predecessor, Rick Singh, have appealed losses in the Yacht and Beach Club litigation.

What’s at Stake for Schools and Local Services

Property taxes fund Orange County government, its libraries, and Orange County Public Schools, one of the largest districts in the country. Successful Disney challenges mean refunds, and refunds come out of money the public has already received and often already spent.

OCPS has set aside $119 million to cover potential losses if Disney prevails across the remaining cases, and has been reserving $8 to $11 million annually since 2021 to hedge against disputed commercial assessments, with Disney identified as the largest source of risk.¹⁰¹³ Tax Collector Randolph has estimated that if the Yacht and Beach Club ruling’s reasoning were applied to every Disney resort hotel back to 2015, the resulting refund could approach $80 million, which he compared to building three new elementary schools or giving every teacher in the district a $6,000 retention bonus.¹⁴

A coalition of Disney’s own tourism workers, represented by Unite Here Local 737 and Local 362, and teachers represented by the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, has been pressing the company to drop the lawsuits voluntarily. “Disney has the legal right to sue,” Local 737’s Ella Wood said in April 2026. “But they also don’t have to.”¹³

What Is Still Unresolved

The resolved cases are a slice of the overall fight. The December 2025 lawsuits covering more than $5.4 billion in assessed values are not expected to see their first court dates until 2027, and the Yacht and Beach Club appeal from October 2024 is still working through the appellate system.⁸ Florida law requires property owners to pay their bills while they litigate, so Disney continues to pay in full and seek refunds afterward. For the 2024 tax year alone, Disney’s bills on the properties covered by its 13 lawsuits that year exceeded $98 million.¹⁵ Each new tax year brings new assessments, and so far, each new assessment has brought a new lawsuit.

1
Orlando Sentinel. Disney Sues Over Orange County Property Tax Assessments Again
2
Realtor.com. Disney Property Tax Lawsuit
3
ClickOrlando. Disney Is Taking Orange County to Court Over Excessive Tax Bills
4
The Counselors of Real Estate. Disney Declares WARA
5
FindLaw. Singh v. Walt Disney Parks and Resorts US, Inc., Case No. 5D18-2927
6
MickeyBlog. Disney Demands Reimbursement From Orange County After Miscalculated Assessment
7
Orlando Sentinel. Disney Wants Reimbursement for $500K Spent to Prove Orange County Appraiser Was Wrong
8
BlogMickey. Update: Walt Disney World’s Property Tax Win Surpasses $215 Million
9
WDWNT. Disney Wins $44 Million Property Tax Lawsuit as Unions Protest
10
Florida Politics. Disney’s Property Tax Fight Draws Protests From Orange County Unions
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Orlando Sentinel. Disney Property Tax Refunds Total Nearly $8 Million, but the Company May Get a Million More
12
Florida Politics. Orange County Property Appraiser Sues Disney Over Hotel’s Assessment
13
Orlando Weekly. Disney World Workers, Teachers Union Urge Disney to Drop Lawsuits Against Orange County
14
WDWNT. Ruling: Walt Disney World Property Tax Refund
15
WDWNT. Disney World 13 Lawsuits 2024 Property Taxes