The Federal Communications Commission has opened a formal investigation into The Walt Disney Company over claims that its flagship network, ABC, may have considered race and gender in hiring decisions—raising the specter of a possible violation of federal equal employment opportunity regulations and, potentially, the revocation of its broadcast license.
The probe, confirmed by FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr in a televised interview Monday, will examine whether Disney’s internal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives compromised the “character qualifications” required to hold a federal broadcast license, writes The Hill.
“If the evidence does in fact play out and shows that they were engaged in race- and gender-based discrimination, that’s a very serious issue at the FCC, that could fundamentally go to their character qualifications to even hold a license,” Carr said in an interview on Fox News’s “The Story” with Jacqui Heinrich on Monday.
“But we’re going to follow the facts wherever they go,” he added.
Carr said the probe is “about the hiring practices and their employment practices,” noting ABC “can’t make hiring decisions based on protected characteristics, including gender and race,” under FCC EEO regulations.
“The evidence we have so far indicates potentially that Disney and ABC were making employment decisions based on race and gender, including having effectively race-defined affinity groups within the company. We have evidence that they put quotas in place based on specific demographics,” Carr said in the Monday interview.
Over the past five years, Disney completely embraced “wokeness,” going as far as banning the phrases “boys” and “girls” or “ladies and gentlemen” at all of its theme parks. In 2024, a former reporter at ESPN, whose parent company is Disney, accused the company of forcing her to ask softball questions to Joe Biden in an effort to protect the ailing, unpopular president.
Carr also hinted that Disney may have attempted to shield its DEI efforts from scrutiny by rebranding them without changing their substance. “We will be looking closely at whether any adjustments were merely cosmetic,” he said.
Supporters of DEI argue that such programs are necessary to correct entrenched imbalances in industries historically closed off to women and people of color. But critics like Carr contend the pendulum may have swung too far—transforming efforts to remedy past injustice into a new form of unlawful discrimination.
The outcome of the FCC’s inquiry could carry far-reaching consequences. If the Commission determines that ABC’s hiring practices violated federal rules, the network’s license to broadcast over public airwaves could be at risk—a rare and potentially seismic development in the American media landscape.
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