Kraken Lawyer Sues MLB For Violating Atlanta's Constitutional Right To Host The All Star Game

Points for creativity!

And lo, a slimy tentacle reached up from beneath the murk! Howard Kleinhendler, late of Wachtell Missry and currently in solo practice in New York, made quite a name for himself tilting at windmills alongside Sidney Powell in the Kraken suits to overturn the 2020 election results. And now he’s continuing his run of, umm, creative filings with this suit against Major League Baseball and the Players’ Association for violating the Constitutional rights of a Texas non-profit by moving the All Star game out of Atlanta.

It’s a wild ride, and it starts with the bizarre assertion that the MLB is a state actor doing violence to the Equal Protection Clause, the Privileges and Immunities Clause and the Dormant Commerce Clause.

In support of the argument that baseball teams are actually the government, Kleinhendler and his client, the Job Creators Network point to public financing of stadiums and MLB’s antitrust exemption, as well as a couple of cases allowing Equal Protection claims against facilities owned by local government bodies and operated by private companies. By the miracle of legal transubstantiation, MLB is thus vicariously a government actor. And thus the decision to move July’s All Star game after Georgia enacted restrictive voting laws in response to discredited allegations of widespread election fraud is actually government action.

Don’t question it — you just have to believe!

At the same time, Mr. Kleinhendler would like you to believe that MLB is attempting to illegally thwart that very government of which it is a part in violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. The KKK Act was passed to ensure that local officials didn’t block Black citizens’ access to the polls in violation of federal law. Some people might blanche at citing it to support a bill which makes it illegal to hand out water to voters stranded in long lines waiting to cast their ballot. But not Howard Kleinhendler.

According to this complaint, “Defendants intended to coerce Georgia’s duly elected Governor and Legislature to repeal the Election Integrity Act and thereby to allow the improper election practices that the Election Integrity Act prohibits, and the ballot integrity measures that the Act requires.”

Furthermore, the complaint alleges that this was part of a conspiracy by MLB and its executives to punish local businesses for electing the legislators who passed the vote “integrity” bill.

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Defendants’ conspiratorial conduct has had a punitive impact on employment arising from the All-Star Game that would have been in Atlanta, Georgia but was deliberately moved to Denver, Colorado, based on conduct aimed to intimidate and punish local business, in violation of Plaintiff JCN and its members’ Equal Protection under the laws. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Atlanta has a 51% black population, while Denver’s black population is only 9%. U.S. Census Bureau data also indicates that there are roughly 7.5 times more black-owned small businesses in Georgia than Colorado.

It’s not clear why this filing contains repeated references to the racial demographics of Georgia and Colorado. It’s also unclear where the plaintiff came up with its estimate of damages to its members, including “3,600 small businesses and their supporters in the Atlanta metropolitan region, which is comprised of Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Cobb, Clayton, Coweta, Douglas, Fayette, and Henry Counties,” an area comprising approximately three thousand square miles.

But Kleinhendler and his client are swinging for the fences, asking some poor judge in the Southern District of New York to award a billion dollars in punitive damages plus several hundred million for various torts and contract claims “to be placed in a fund administered by Plaintiff under the Court’s supervision and distributed to victims of Defendants’ tortious conduct.”

“Never allow the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game!” Babe Ruth said. But if he’d seen this lawsuit, he might have been more specific.

Job Creators Network v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball [Docket via Court Listener]

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Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.