The Republican National Committee is pursuing legal action against the tech giant Google, claiming that its email service Gmail has been suppressing the RNC’s email solicitations before the upcoming midterm elections.
In a lawsuit filed Friday in the District Court for the Eastern District of California, the RNC accused Gmail of discrimination for unfairly sending emails from the group to users’ spam folders, instead of their inbox.
The RNC claims this has both impacted efforts to gain support in swing states and the group’s ability to fundraise.
“Enough is enough — we are suing Google for their blatant bias against Republicans,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement to The Associated Press. “For ten months in a row, Google has sent crucial end-of-month Republican GOTV and fundraising emails to spam with zero explanation. We are committed to putting an end to this clear pattern of bias.”
Google has denied the allegations made in the lawsuit. José Castañeda, a spokesperson for Google, shared a statement in which he said the company provides training and guidelines for campaigns, working to “maximize email deliverability while minimizing unwanted spam.”
“As we have repeatedly said, we simply don’t filter emails based on political affiliation. Gmail’s spam filters reflect users’ actions,” Castañeda said.
Major email providers like Gmail create their own programs to filter through emails that could be unwelcome. Instead, programs opt to send them to spam folders in order to keep users, like Gmail’s 1.5 billion, from having too much junk mail.
The RNC’s lawsuit looks to focus on exactly how Google screens the solicitations and other mail its users receive. The suit claims Google “relegated millions of RNC emails en masse to potential donors’ and supporters’ spam folders during pivotal points in election fundraising and community building.”
“It doesn’t matter whether the email is about donating, voting, or community outreach. And it doesn’t matter whether the emails are sent to people who requested them,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit also comes on the heels of a study by North Carolina State University which found that Gmail was far more likely to block an email continuing a conservative cause than it was to a liberal one.
The study examined emails sent during the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign. It found that 10% of “left-wing” emails were sent to spam folders, while 77% of “right-wing” emails were.
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