The Republican National Committee is suing Google. According to Axios (via The Verge), the group filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of California Court on Friday.
The lawsuit accuses Google of sending “millions” of RNC campaign emails to Gmail’s spam folder, an extension of its “discriminatory” filtering.
“At approximately the same time at the end of each month, Google is spamming almost all of RNC’s emails,” the lawsuit states. “Critically and suspiciously, this month end is historically the most successful time for RNC fundraising.”
The lawsuit comes after Google launched a controversial program to appease Republican lawmakers concerned about its filtering practices.
In June, after research found that Gmail was more likely to filter Republican campaign emails than competing email clients, the company worked with the Federal Election Commission to ensure that political messages were filtered into spam folders.
It has announced that it will test a system to prevent entry. The concession comes after Republican lawmakers introduced a bill that would seek to ban email platforms from using algorithms to automatically route election messages.
The Verge recently reported that the Republican National Committee is not leveraging a program built by Google to address party concerns.
The group’s complaint does not specifically mention the pilot program. Instead, it points to a training session attended by the RNC on August 11, the same day the FEC approved Google’s program.
“This discrimination has continued for about 10 months, despite the best efforts of the RNC working with Google,” the group said. Google did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment.
The company told Axios, “As we have repeatedly said, we do not filter emails based on political affiliation,” adding that Gmail’s spam filters reflect user behavior.
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