MLB says lawsuit to stop game is baseless

Major League Baseball derided a lawsuit that would prohibit it from playing the All-Star Game at Coors Field as a publicity stunt devoid of merit in federal court filings Monday.

The league told a federal judge in Manhattan that its decision to move the All-Star Game to Denver must be upheld in order to protect MLB’s “right to demonstrate their values and preserving their freedom as private entities to determine where to hold their events.”

The league was responding to a lawsuit filed last week by the Job Creators Network, a conservative business group, that accuses MLB and the players union of conspiring to harm Atlanta-area businesses by moving July’s All-Star Game to Colorado. The group seeks $1.1 billion in damages and an injunction that would force MLB to play the game near Atlanta.

In a separate filing Monday, the Major League Baseball Players Association questioned why it was being sued since it had no role in MLB’s decision to relocate. It called the lawsuit “political theater,” an “abuse of the judicial process” and mocked the lawsuit’s suggestion that the constitutional rights of Georgia business owners were violated.

“The Founding Fathers did not bestow upon American cities the right to an MLB All-Star Game,” the union’s lawyers wrote.

In early April, MLB announced the July 13 game will be played in Denver rather than in the Atlanta suburbs in response to a new Georgia voting law that Republicans say will improve election integrity and Democrats consider to be voter suppression.

Colorado officials expect an economic impact of more than $100 million from the All-Star Game.

Job Creators Network alleges that MLB and MLBPA unlawfully conspired to financially harm Georgia businesses, many of which are Black-owned, in violation of a 19th-century law meant to crack down on the Ku Klux Klan.

It also alleges that MLB owes those Georgia businesses $100 million in lost revenue and $1 billion in punitive damages for going back on its promise.

MLB and MLBPA claim in their responses that they never signed contracts with the Georgia businesses or promised the game would be played there. And because they did not conspire and are not the government, they could not have violated the constitutional rights of the businesses.

MLBPA, whose executive director is Black, was particularly offended by the accusation that it conspired to hurt racial minorities.

“Taken to its logical extreme,” MLB’s attorneys wrote, “JCN’s reading of the (lw) would mean that citizens of every state in which MLB chose not to hold the All-Star Game in a given year would have a claim that their constitutional rights were violated because they were not treated in the same way as citizens of the state where the game was being held.”

An attorney for the Job Creators Network, Howard Kleinhendler, said in a statement that his client will address MLB’s arguments in a court filing Tuesday. He accused MLB of being dismissive of the financial hardships that Atlanta’s minority-owned businesses are experiencing: “Small businesses in Georgia certainly don’t feel as if JCN’s lawsuit is ‘political theatrics.’ ”

The first hearing in the case will be Thursday at a federal courthouse in Manhattan.

U.S. District Court Judge Valerie E. Caproni may decide then whether the game can be played in Denver.