Here's my take on it. In substance, in fact, it likely is a violation of the first amendment - but proving it is is another matter.
People are sometimes deceptive about things being linked. And I suspect that will be a question here. As obvious as it seems that there is a direct causality between Disney speaking against the Republican bigot bill, and the Republicans changing policy on Disney, they can argue they're unrelated. Sure, they had a kerfuffle about the bill, but they also just happened to make an unrelated policy decision on another matter. Prove them wrong.
The Supreme Court has all but gutted any laws against bribery because of this - prosecutors need practically a document signed by both parties saying "this exchange of goods is based on your performing an official action in our favor" to get a bribery conviction now. It doesn't seem to matter how obvious it is, short of a confessed quid pro quo.
So I'd suspect any challenge of this based on the first amendment would need to have pretty solid proof of the causality, more even than people talking about the two together, but actually proving enough people voted for it saying "I only voted for this because of Disney's criticism". And even then I'm not sure it's enough.
Because as I understand, this is always a discretionary power of the government, to grant this or not. I suspect courts are loathe to turn the discretionary power into a court-enforced guaranteed right of Disney the legislature loses the power to change.
So while we can all day rightly recognize it as a substantive violation of the first amendment, I'm not sure the courts will recognize that and limit the legislature.
On the other hand, with this principle about the government having discretionary powers it can use wrongly, it might be hard but it's not impossible for courts to recognize wrongdoing and limit them.
For example, police officers might have discretion on handing out tickets. But, as hard as it would be, if it could be proven in court that the department used race as the basis for it - all/most blacks get tickets, all/most whites don't - the court could find wrongdoing and try to order some corrective action. But how often has that happened?
On the third hand, Disney does have great resources for a legal battle, so if there can be a legal challenge mounted on this, they seem likely to do it. I suspect it'll come down to what Disney's lawyers tell them their chances are, and that it's an uphill battle for Disney. What seems likely is Republican Taliban 1; Disney, freedom and morals 0.
