The Republican National Committee (RNC) has lost a legal campaign claiming Google acted illegally when filtering campaign emails.
California federal Judge Daniel Calabretta ruled the state’s Unfair Competition Law did not cover Google’s alleged conduct, and the case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning that whilst the ruling can be appealed, it cannot be brought to another court.
The RNC primarily claimed its campaign emails were filtered into spam at a much higher rate than those of its Democrat opponents, resulting in an indirect ‘illegal corporate contribution to Democrat candidates’, as nonmonetary contributions must be counted towards overall contribution limits.
‘Unfair’ but not illegal
Judge Calabretta acknowledged while Google may not have acted ‘fairly’, the company credibly supported its claim the spam filter existed for ‘commercial reasons’ and therefore was not classified as a campaign contribution,
“The RNC may be correct that Google’s alleged conduct (if proven) is ‘unfair’ in a colloquial sense, the RNC is unable to point to any legislative policy that is implicated by the alleged conduct,” the ruling stated.
The judge found the most convincing demonstration of Google acting unjustly to be that the ‘mass diversion’ of emails stopped once the RNC filed the suit. However, technical considerations may have played a part in this change, and Judge Calabretta did not find legislative policy violations, or ‘sufficient harm to Gmail users’.
The news marks the second time an RNC claim against Google was dismissed in court, following a similar 2023 suit of ‘discriminatory’ spam filtering, after failing to prove Google acted in bad faith. Likewise, a Federal Elections Commission complaint was filed and lost after the commission found ‘no reason to believe’ Google’s algorithm was weighed against Republicans.
Google, which has consistently denied political bias in its algorithm, welcomed the ruling. The RNC has not yet offered comment.
Via The Verge
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