RNC Files Lawsuit Against Google Over Email Spam Filters

The Republican National Committee (RNC) has filed a lawsuit against Alphabet Inc.’s Google LLC for allegedly sending millions of campaign emails to Gmail users’ spam folders.

The lawsuit filed in California’s Eastern District Court claimed that the US search giant sends all RNC emails to spam at around the same time at the end of each month, accusing the company of performing discriminatory filtering practices because of its political affiliation and views.

According to the organization, this end of October is a historically crucial time for their fundraising. Republicans have struggled to meet their fundraising goals ahead of the midterm elections.

RNC also said the alleged directing of its emails to spam folders had cost them revenue, and they could lose more in the following weeks as the midterm elections draw closer.

The group claimed Google has hindered communications with voters and resulted in $75,000 worth of lost donations, with millions of dollars allegedly being lost over the long term.

Still, they stated that whether the email was about donation, voting, or community building was not important.

Google has denied the claims.

Google’s Spam-Proof Pilot Program Allegedly Not Being Used

The RNC has criticized Google’s alleged filtering bias for around ten months, claiming it unfairly places Republican-backed political emails in spam folders compared to emails from Democrats.

Republicans have long complained about tech giants’ alleged discrimination against conservative opinions and censorship of free speech, a claim that major tech companies have firmly rejected.

To address the issue, the California-based company launched a spam-proofing pilot program in September to keep political emails from being classified as spam due to algorithms. Instead, political emails would be sent to spam folders only if users marked them as spam.

However, Republicans were reportedly not using the program, which would have required them to comply with security conditions and best practice requirements when sending out emails in large quantities.

The lawsuit did not clearly mention the pilot program implemented by Google, although it did say the RNC’s digital department received training from the firm on email best practices on August 11, the same day the Federal Election Commission (FEC) provided Google’s pilot program the green light.