Google is being sued by the Republican National Committee. According to Axios, the nonprofit filed a complaint on Friday in California’s Eastern District Court. According to the lawsuit, Google sent “millions” of RNC campaign emails to Gmail spam folders as part of the company’s “discriminatory” filtering methods.
The complaint comes after Google established a contentious initiative to please Republican legislators worried about the company’s screening tactics. Following research that revealed Gmail was more likely than rival email clients to filter emails from Republican campaigns, the firm said in June that it will collaborate with the Federal Election Commission to develop a system to prevent political communications from ending up in spam folders. The compromise came after Republican legislators sponsored legislation that would prohibit email providers from employing algorithms to automatically route campaign communications.
The Republican National Committee is not using the software Google developed to meet the party’s concerns. The pilot is not specifically mentioned in the organization’s complaint. It instead refers to a training session attended by the RNC on August 11th, the same day the FEC authorized Google’s program.
