A Texas nonprofit is suing Major League Baseball (MLB) after the league moved its 2021 All Star game from Atlanta to Denver, Colorado in protest over a recently-implemented voter ID law.
“A 21-page lawsuit by conservative small-business advocacy organization Job Creators Network, filed Monday in federal court in New York, demands the immediate return of the game to Atlanta and $100 million in damages to local and state small businesses,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. “The suit also seeks $1 billion in punitive damages.”
“The lawsuit contends that, in moving the game, MLB ‘acted beyond any plausible legitimate civic or moral concern affecting the integrity of the sport of baseball’ and ‘intended to punish Georgians because their state enacted a reasonable ballot-integrity statute,'” that report said.
Cobb County’s tourism bureau estimated that the county would lose $100 million in revenue after the All Star Game was moved, the same amount requested in damages in the lawsuit.
Alfredo Ortiz is the president and CEO of Jobs Creator Network. He joined Fox News to discuss the ramifications of moving the game in April, just after the MLB made the announcement.
“[Georgia] is barely making it out of this pandemic,” he said at the time. “And now they’re faced, under the Biden administration, with potentially higher taxes, a higher minimum wage, more red tape and regulations, and now this.”
He also accused left-wing activists of spreading an “outright lie” about the new law.
“These small business owners, especially in Cobb – I mean, a lot of these are minority owned businesses – who were looking forward and desperately needed this kind of revenue,” he said. “And all because, quite frankly, there was a misinterpretation or a misunderstanding or quite frankly just an outright lie of the law that was passed here in Georgia on voting rights.”
Georgia’s new voter ID law requires voters who wish to vote absentee to present identification. It also limits ballot drop boxes, which caused major confusion in Georgia during the 2020 election cycle. Some of the questions surrounding legally-required chain-of-custody documents for absentee ballots dropped in drop boxes still have not been answered.
The social justice mob, led by likely 2022 gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, pressured business to condemn the new law and boycott the state.
When the economic ramifications of such boycotts became clear, Abrams blamed Republicans.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a contributor at The Georgia Star News and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
