ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Major League Baseball will play its 2025 All-Star Game in Atlanta, four years after moving the event from Truist Park to Denver's Coors Field over objections to changes in Georgia's voting rights laws.

Atlanta was awarded the 2021 All-Star Game in May 2019, but MLB moved it in April 2021, just three months before the game was played.

"I made the decision in 2021 to move the event. and I understand, believe me, that people had then and probably still have different views as to the merits of that decision," baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said Thursday during an announcement that followed an owners' meeting.

"What's most important is that the Atlanta Braves are a great organization, Truist Park and The Battery are gems in terms of the facilities," Manfred said. "With their great fan base and rich history, Atlanta deserves an All-Star Game and we're really looking forward to being there in 2025."

Next year's All-Star Game will be at Arlington's Globe Life Field and the 2026 game will be in Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Park to mark the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Critics complained in 2021 that the voting rights changes in Georgia were too restrictive. Manfred made the decision to move the All-Star events and the amateur draft from Atlanta after discussions with individual players and the Players Alliance, an organization of Black players formed after the death of George Floyd in 2020.

Civil rights and voting advocacy groups, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice, filed lawsuits challenging the law shortly after it was signed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican. They accused the Republican majority in the state legislature of trying to deny Black people and other voters of color equal access to the ballot box in violation of the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.

They alleged that Republicans were trying to maintain a tenuous hold on the state after major Democratic wins in 2020. Former President Donald Trump narrowly lost Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden and two Republican U.S. senators were unseated by Democrats in runoff elections.

The litigation is ongoing, but a federal judge last month declined to block several contested portions of the law while the legal challenges play out. U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee wrote plaintiffs have not proven "at this stage of the proceedings" that any of the provisions have a disparate impact on Black voters or that state lawmakers knew that it would have a disparate impact on minority voters.

That means the challenged portions of the law likely will remain in effect at least through the 2024 election cycle.

___

AP News: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB