FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 7, 2021

CONTACT: Tracey Miller, 202-660-1628, Tracey.Miller@theacru.org

Former Attorney General Edwin Meese III and American Constitutional Rights Union Take on Major League Baseball in Court

New York, NY—Former Attorney General Edwin Meese III and the American Constitutional Rights Union, of which he is a member of the Board, have filed a hard-hitting amicus brief supporting Job Creators Network in their lawsuit against Major League Baseball.

The Job Creators Network (JCN) is suing Major League Baseball (MLB) to force them to reverse their decision to move the MLB All-Star game from Atlanta. MLB moved the game to protest Georgia’s new election integrity law.

The move will cause major economic consequences to the greater Atlanta community. This has led to complaints that Major League Baseball is not representing the interests of its owners as it participates in political cancel culture and appears to do the bidding of leftist activists, such as Stacey Abrams, who maintain that measures such as voter identification are racist.

As a result of MLB’s decision to suddenly leave Atlanta, Cobb County Travel and Tourism Bureau estimates that local businesses will lose more than $100 million in economic activity. MLB has been criticized by many because their decision to move the game to Denver, a less racially diverse city, disproportionately hurts Black business owners.

General Meese and American Constitutional Rights Union (ACRU) assert:

“It is especially unfortunate that opposition to Georgia’s SB 202 is being driven by Major League Baseball (Defendants), given that they are a for-profit business that has nothing to do with elections. Defendants are part of the sports entertainment industry, whose foremost concern should be the financial success of their business. Wading into this political and legal controversy—and taking the incorrect side of the legal dispute—does not advance that corporate mission. Not only does Defendants’ involvement here hurt their business, it also potentially violates their legal obligations to their stakeholders by dividing the business’s customer base. Moreover, it hurts the very community Defendants claim to be supporting: the majority-black population and business community of Atlanta.”

Since March, when Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed the Election Integrity Act to expand voting access, require voter identification and stop some practices that enable vote fraud, the Left has made every effort to associate the voting security measures with Jim Crow practices of the past, which, notably, were mostly perpetrated by Democrats.

The ACRU brief quotes:

“A valuable perspective on that matter comes from J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Policy Board member of Amicus Curiae ACRU, not only as a former top election officer as Ohio Secretary of State, but also as a black American who was the mayor of a major city with a large black population and someone who is currently a minority shareholder in an MLB franchise (the Cincinnati Reds).[1] ‘Not only do 77 percent of voters support voter ID, but polls show that 61 percent of black voters support voter ID,” Blackwell said in a recent radio interview discussing the moving of the All-Star Game out of Georgia. ‘How can something be a form of racist voter suppression if 61 percent of that voting group supports the measure?’”

ACRU leaders such as Secretary Blackwell and former Congressman Lieutenant Colonel Allen West, who hails from Atlanta, often point out the hypocrisy of the Left’s Jim Crow accusations. Recently, in an ACRU radio ad LTC West said, “Presenting identification to vote is the gold standard in voting all over the world. Yet some say it is racist to mandate IDs. This is insulting. They are insinuating that black people cannot get IDs. Are they questioning our intelligence? Do they think we are not full members of a society where people need an id for just about everything? It is time to stop the attacks. We should all work together to make sure it is easy to vote and hard to cheat.”

ACRU President Lori Roman stated: “Because Major League Baseball’s criticisms of Georgia’s election law are untrue and ridiculous, their action to move the All-Star Game has hurt both their corporate interests and the community they claimed to support in Georgia. Their action to move the All-Star Game should be rescinded. And this debacle should be a lesson to corporations who attempt to do the bidding of politicians. It never ends well.”

Background

Edwin Meese III served as the 75th Attorney General of the United States. For more than a half century of public life, Attorney General Meese has been at the forefront of protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States, from serving as Chief of Staff to then-Governor Ronald Reagan of California, to serving as Counselor to the President in the White House of President Reagan, to leading the U.S. Department of Justice as Attorney General, to three decades as a private citizen working with some of the foremost institutions in the United States dedicated to good governance, patriotism, and the principles of American exceptionalism, as well as continuing to advise and assist several Presidents during their successive Administrations. Throughout this time, Attorney General Meese has been heavily engaged in election integrity at both the federal and state levels.

The American Constitutional Rights Union (ACRU) is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization incorporated in Washington, D.C., dedicated to protecting constitutional liberty. The ACRU Policy Board sets the policy priorities of the organization and includes some of the most distinguished statesmen in the Nation on election matters. Current members of the Policy Board include Attorney General Meese and former Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who also served as a Commissioner on the Presidential Commission on Election Integrity and the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

—30—

American Constitutional Rights Union, a non-partisan, non-profit public policy organization dedicated to defending the constitutionally-protected civil rights of all Americans.

[1] See Robert Kraychik, Exclusive—Ken Blackwell: MLB All-Star Game Leaving Atlanta is a ‘Slap in the Face’ to ‘Black Entrepreneurs and Business Owners’, Breitbart News, May 11, 2021, https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2021/05/11/ken-blackwell-mlb-all-star-game-leaving-atlanta-slap-black-entrepreneurs-business-owners/.