Scott Martin, contributor to FOX Business, and Dion Rabouin, market editor at Axios, opine on ‘FOX Business Tonight’
The Major League Baseball is likely to lose its decades-old antitrust exemption, two US Republican senators said Friday night.
US Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah reacted after the MLB announced it would relocate this year’s All-Star Game and Georgia’s 2021 draft over its new voting law.
“Why does @MLB still have antitrust immunity?” Lee tweeted. “It is time for the federal government to stop giving special privileges to favored and specific corporations – especially those that punish their political opponents.”
In his message, Lee retweeted a post by US Congressman Jeff Duncan, RS.C., which promised to take similar action in the U.S. House.
TRUMP CALLS FOR THE MLB BOYCOTT, WARNS ‘WOKE’ CORPORATIONS AFTER THE ALL-STAR GAME
Cruz then added that he and Lee would work “hard to END MLB’s antitrust immunity”.
The MLB’s antitrust exemption has been in effect since a 1922 Supreme Court decision ruling that the league is a sport and not a business. The National Football League, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League do not have the same exemption.
REPUBLICANS SLAM MLB FOR PULLING GEORGIA’S ALL-STAR GAME ON VOTING LAW
The league made the decision to relocate the Atlanta area All-Star Game after pressure from those who claim that the voting law, designed to make elections safer by requiring ID for postal voting, among other changes, is actually intended to suppress the vote.
The game would be played in July at Truist Park in Cobb County, Georgia, just outside Atlanta, home of the Atlanta Braves. No new locations have been announced yet.
The new electoral law comes months after President Biden’s victory over former President Trump in the state last November and a Democratic victory in the run-off elections to the state Senate in January.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement on Friday: “Major League Baseball fundamentally supports the right to vote for all Americans and is opposed to restrictions at the ballot box”, adding: “” I decided that the best way of demonstrating our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game and MLB Draft. “
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Other Georgia-based companies, such as Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines, have also criticized the law.