From Republican National Comm. v. Google, Inc., decided yesterday by Judge Daniel Calabretta (E.D. Cal.):
[RNC] brings this suit alleging that [Google] has been intentionally misdirecting the RNC's emails to Gmail users' spam folders at the end of each month "to secretly suppress[ ] the political speech and income of one major political party." According to the RNC, "[w]hether Google is characterized as a common carrier, public accommodation, or a business providing a service, California law prohibits Google's spam filtration of RNC emails based on political affiliation and views." Plaintiff seeks recovery for donations it allegedly lost as a result of its emails not being delivered to its supporters' inboxes.
Defendant has moved to dismiss Plaintiff's Complaint on the basis that Plaintiff has failed to plausibly allege its claims, and that section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. § 230, compels the case be dismissed regardless. While it is a close case, the Court concludes that under the pleading standards set forth in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly (2007) and Ashcroft v. Iqbal (2009), the RNC has not sufficiently pled that Google acted in bad faith in filtering the RNC's messages into Gmail users' spam folders, and that doing so was protected by section 230….
Beginning in December 2021, the RNC observed a drop off of its messages' inboxing rate at the end of the month, a pattern that repeated in every subsequent month in 2022. Compared to other large email providers, Google allegedly diverts a larger percentage of the RNC's emails to spam at the end of every month, and with more consistency.
