Before he became Disney's top lawyer, Horacio Gutiérrez faced powerful adversaries, defending Microsoft in its antitrust fights and taking on Apple while at Spotify. All that was a warm-up for his biggest challenge -- a First Amendment battle with the Trump administration.
On Tuesday, Gutiérrez will square off against the Federal Communications Commission in federal court in Washington, D.C. The company is seeking to halt an early renewal application request of its ABC broadcast licenses, a move typically used when the agency is preparing to fine or challenge a broadcast licensee.
Disney said the request is part of a Trump administration campaign against free speech and media outlets critical of the president.
The FCC said the license review isn't about free speech but is instead part of a probe into whether Disney's diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives violated the agency's prohibition on unlawful discrimination.
Faced with the question of how to respond to the FCC's review of its broadcast licenses, Gutiérrez made the case to Disney CEO Josh D'Amaro and the board that the company should challenge the process in court, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
"He essentially said we had to do it," said Bob Iger, Disney's former CEO who remains on the board.
The company's decision to fight in court represents a rebuke of an administration that has at times taken an aggressive stance toward media and entertainment companies.
The case's implications extend well beyond Disney. Legal experts say a ruling could help determine how the government can use its regulatory authority over broadcasters, including when their news coverage or programming draws the ire of an administration.
Gutiérrez, 61, has assembled a high-wattage legal team including former Solicitor General Paul Clement and trial lawyer Beth Wilkinson to make the company's case in court. U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan is set to hear arguments on Disney's request to temporarily block the FCC from moving forward with the early review.
He spent much of the weekend holed up in Wilkinson's Washington offices, where lawyers took turns role-playing as the judge and peppering lawyers with the toughest questions they could devise.
"There are people who throw punches and bluster to make noise in the room," said Emery Simon, Spotify's former vice president of global government relations. "Horacio rarely does anything without having a strategy behind it."
A brewing battle
Tuesday's showdown is the culmination of nearly two years of escalating tensions between Disney and President Trump over ABC's journalism and programming.
In 2024, ABC agreed to pay $15 million to Trump's presidential foundation or museum and $1 million in legal fees to settle his defamation lawsuit against the network and anchor George Stephanopoulos, who had inaccurately said that Trump had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. A federal jury determined he was liable for sexual abuse, but not rape.
Trump has since called for ABC to fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, a frequent critic of the administration, and said that the network should lose its broadcast license for not broadcasting his July speech about election fraud.
Trump's FCC, chaired by Brendan Carr, has also questioned whether ABC's daytime talk show "The View," whose hosts are often critical of the president, should retain a longstanding exemption from rules requiring broadcasters to give political candidates equal time to public airwaves.
While Gutiérrez believed the settlement of the Stephanopoulos case made sense, he thought Trump had interpreted it as a sign that Disney would be more willing to bend to his demands and could come for more, the person said. Gutiérrez argued that Disney had to draw a line to protect the editorial independence of its programming.
The FCC clash shows his willingness to go to the mat when necessary, people who have worked with him say. The FCC's goals in the case "don't lend themselves to easy resolution," said Simon.
Heading to court
Gutiérrez grew up in Maracaibo, Venezuela, and decided by age 14 that he wanted to become a lawyer. One of his childhood heroes was Hall of Fame shortstop Luis Aparicio, another Maracaibo native whose success in the U.S. inspired him.
Gutiérrez entered law school at 16 and eventually came to the U.S. on a Fulbright scholarship to earn a master's degree at Harvard Law School.
After moving to Florida, Gutiérrez found his Venezuelan law degrees and Harvard master's weren't enough to practice there. He went back to law school at night while working full time, graduating as valedictorian from the University of Miami.
He joined Microsoft in 1998 as the technology giant was battling the Justice Department in a landmark antitrust case over its dominance of the personal-computer operating-system market. Microsoft initially lost, with a federal judge ordering the company to be broken in two, though that order was later overturned on appeal and the case was ultimately settled.
A young Gutiérrez worked on proceedings related to the settlement, sending Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer nightly reports on what had happened in court. He spent nearly 20 years at the company, eventually rising to general counsel.
"He doesn't posture," said former Microsoft colleague Tom Rubin, who is now an OpenAI executive. The two negotiated with each other on Disney's short-lived partnership with the artificial-intelligence company. "He'll always listen to the other side."
In 2016, Gutiérrez became Spotify's top lawyer and was an architect and public face of its fight against Apple, which Spotify complained was abusing its control over the App Store.
At the heart of the battle was Apple's practice of taking a cut of as much as 30% on purchases made through its App Store and restrictions on Spotify's ability to steer its customers to other ways to pay. European regulators ultimately sided with Spotify, fining Apple nearly $2 billion.
Gutiérrez joined Disney as general counsel in 2022, when Bob Chapek was chief executive. Within months, Chapek was ousted and Iger returned.
Gutiérrez and Iger had breakfast the morning after the CEO's return was announced and he is one of the few top-level Chapek-era executives still with Disney.
"He's a pragmatist," Iger said. "He has an ability to weigh the pros and cons and all the pertinent issues."
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