Republicans sue Google over ‘discriminatory’ spam filtering practices

The RNC is suing the internet giant for sending millions of campaign emails to users. According to the lawsuit filed in California's Eastern District Court on Friday, the RNC accusesGoogle of "throttling its email messages because of the RNC's political affiliation and views."

For months, the RNC has been complaining about the fact that Republican emails are put in the junk mail more often than Democratic ones. A group of Republicans introduced a bill after a North Carolina State University study showed that RNC emails were being sent to the junk mail more often.

In order to address the RNC's concerns, a pilot program was rolled out in September. The Republicans haven't taken advantage of the program, which would have required them to follow security requirements and best practice standards when sending out emails in bulk.

Despite the RNC's best efforts, this discrimination has been going on for about a year.

According to the lawsuit, the RNC claims that Google has continued to send RNC emails to users in order to get supporters and raise money for the upcoming elections. The end of October is one of the most crucial fundraising periods for Republicans, as they have been struggling to meet their goals in the months leading up to the election.

According to the lawsuit, this discrimination has been going on for about ten months. The RNC has been trying to get an explanation and a solution from the internet giant for years. Every solution has failed.

On August 11th, the day the Federal Election Commission approved the pilot program, the organization received a training session on email best practices from the company. The lawsuit states that the filters recurred despite the RNC following the best practices of the internet giant.

We don't filters email based on political affiliation. According to Castaeda, the filters reflect users actions. We provide training and guidelines to campaigns, and we recently launched an FEC-approved pilot for political senders.

According to the RNC, Google hampered its ability to communicate with voters and cost it over $75,000 in lost donations, with long-term losses totaling "in the millions of dollars."

There is a statement from a Google spokesman.

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