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The Republican National Committee is suing Google for spam filtering of Gmail, alleging that the company “unlawfully discriminates against” the RNC by “restricting its email messages because of the RNC’s political affiliations and views.”
“Google has downgraded millions of RNC emails en masse spam folders from potential donors and supporters during pivotal points in election fundraising and community building,” claims the lawsuit filed Thursday in the US District Court for the Eastern District of California. The spam filtering has resulted in the RNC losing valuable revenue in California and the rest of the country, and Google’s behavior will continue to cost the RNC even more revenue in the coming weeks as the 2022 midterm elections loom, and beyond,” it says.
The lawsuit says the “timing of Google’s most blatant filtering is particularly damning.” The RNC said nearly all of its emails end up in users’ inboxes for the majority of each month, but the ratio flips at the end of the month.
“About the same time at the end of each month, Google sends to spam almost all of the RNC’s emails,” the lawsuit said. “Critical and suspicious, this end of the month has historically been the period when the RNC’s fundraising efforts have been most successful. It doesn’t matter if the email is about donating, voting, or community outreach. And it doesn’t matter if the emails are sent to people who have requested them. This discrimination has been going on for about ten months, despite the RNC’s efforts to partner with Google.”
Google denied the allegations and said the spam filtering is based on actions taken by users. “As we’ve said repeatedly, we simply don’t filter emails based on political affiliation,” Google said in a statement to Ars. “Gmail’s spam filters reflect users’ actions. We provide training and campaign guidance, we recently launched an FEC-approved political sender pilot, and we continue to work to maximize email delivery and minimize unwanted spam.”
RNC: Gmail is “Modern Western Union”
The RNC lawsuit compared Google’s actions to Western Union’s discriminating against telegraph users based on their political views in the 19th century. “Essentially, Google’s e-mail service is a modern Western Union: Google offers to send messages in the form of e-mail… While Google’s tools for discriminating may be more sophisticated than Western Union’s, that it is no less of a company in violation of the long-standing non-discrimination obligations that states such as California have enacted,” the lawsuit said.
The RNC asked for a court order “declaring it illegal and ordering Google to divert the RNC’s communications to its supporters who use Google’s Gmail service.” The Republican group also asked for compensatory, legal and punitive damages.”Whether Google is categorized as a regular airline, public accommodation or a business that provides a service, California law prohibits Google’s spam filtering of RNC emails based on political affiliation and views,” the lawsuit said.
The RNC said it wants swift action because the upcoming midterm elections will “necessitate Google immediately stop deliberately (or negligently) mislabeling RNC emails as spam.” The lawsuit alleges violations of California’s common carrier law, the Unruh Civil Rights Act and the unfair competition law. It also alleges willful and negligent interference in future economic relations, negligence and unlawful discrimination.
As Google noted in its statement on the lawsuit, in August the US Federal Election Commission approved the company’s plan to let campaign emails bypass Gmail’s spam filters. The FEC’s advisory states that Gmail’s pilot program is permitted under the Federal Election Campaign Act and FEC regulations “and would not lead to the making of any prohibited in-kind contribution.”
The Democratic National Committee objected to the Google plan, saying it would reward “a variety of fundraising practices designed to mislead donors.” The DNC accused Republicans of using “deceptive fundraising tactics,” including “pre-ticked boxes that trick donors into unknowingly making recurring contributions.”
Gmail has also received complaints from individual Republicans such as Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). But Rubio’s problem “was that a vendor hadn’t enabled an authentication tool to prevent messages from being marked as spam,” The Washington Post reported in late July. Rubio was one of more than 20 Republicans in the Senate to sponsor legislation that would prohibit email providers from “using filtering algorithms to flag emails from political campaigns” unless the recipient of the email “took action to apply such a label”.
