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Major League Baseball Sued for Relocating All-Star Game in Protest of Georgia Voter Law

A lawsuit by a Trump-friendly group invokes a Ku Klux Klan law to recoup the $100M it says it lost after baseball responded to Georgia’s harsh new voting rules.

A conservative small-business advocacy group is suing Major League Baseball for pulling this year’s All-Star Game out of Atlanta, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Founded by mega Trump donor Bernie Marcus, the group, Job Creators Network, filed a 21-page lawsuit that claims the MLB broke a law meant to protect people from the Ku Klux Klan, citing that the organization “purposefully and maliciously” moved the game to spite small-business owners. Job Creators Network is asking for $100 million in damages, claiming that the MLB’s relocation of the game caused “staggering” losses for local small businesses, according to the newspaper. The lawsuit alleges that more than 8,000 hotel reservations were canceled, and also asks for $1 billion in punitive damages. MLB announced in April that it would be moving the game to protest Georgia’s restrictive new voter laws. The All-Star Game will now be held in Denver.

“MLB robbed the small businesses of Atlanta—many of them minority-owned—of $100 million, we want the game back where it belongs,” said Alfredo Ortiz, CEO of Job Creators Network. “This was a knee-jerk, hypocritical, and illegal reaction to misinformation about Georgia’s new voting law which includes voter ID. Major League Baseball itself requests ID at will-call ticket windows at Yankee Stadium in New York, Busch Stadium in St. Louis, and at ballparks all across the country.”