Move FM Global News

WASHINGTON D.C.: The Republican National Committee has filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging the tech giant is purposely diverting its emails to users’ spam folders.

According to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in California, the RNC accuses Google of “discriminating” against it by “throttling its email messages because of the RNC’s political affiliation and views.”

“Google has relegated millions of RNC emails en masse to potential donors’ and supporters’ spam folders during pivotal points in election fundraising and community building,” the RNC said in the lawsuit.

Google rejects the claims, and its spokesperson, Jose Castaneda, said in a statement, “As we have repeatedly said, we simply don’t filter emails based on political affiliation. Gmail’s spam filters reflect users’ actions.”

The RNC has claimed that for most of the month, almost all of its emails were sent to users’ inboxes, adding that at the end of the month, an important fund-raising period, nearly all of their emails were forwarded to spam folders.

“Critically and suspiciously, this end of the month period is historically when the RNC’s fundraising is most successful,” the committee said, claiming that the “discrimination” had been going on for about 10 months, despite its best efforts to work with Google.

The alleged routing of its emails to spam folders had used up revenue, and more money would be lost in coming weeks in the run-up to the midterm elections, it added.

Big tech companies have been accused by Republicans of discriminating against conservative opinion and suppressing free speech, something which tech companies strongly deny.