Section 230 Bars RNC’s Spam Email Allegations vs. Google, Court Finds

U.S. District Judge Daniel Calabretta for Eastern California in Sacramento granted Google’s Jan. 23 motion to dismiss the Republican National Committee’s complaint and its allegations that Google intentionally misdirected the RNC’s fundraising emails to Gmail users’ spam folders at the end of each month (see 2210260080), said Calabretta’s signed order Thursday (docket 2:22-cv-01904). The judge granted the RNC partial leave to amend to establish that Google didn't act in good faith, said the order.

Google moved for dismissal on grounds that the RNC “has failed to plausibly allege its claims,” and that Section 230 of the Communications Decency “compels the case be dismissed regardless,” said the order. It’s a “close case,” said Calabretta’s order.

But the judge concluded the RNC hasn’t “sufficiently pled” that Google “acted in bad faith in filtering the RNC’s messages into Gmail users’ spam folders.” Doing so was protected by Section 230, said his order. It cites the “pleading standards” set forth in the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly and in the 2009 decision in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, "On the merits," Calabretta, a President Joe Biden appointee, concluded that the RNC’s claims “fail as a matter of law.”

“At the outset,” said the order, the RNC’s suit is barred because Google is entitled to Section 230 immunity. Section 230 “affords interactive computer service providers immunity from liability for decisions related to blocking and screening of offensive material, or for providing others with the technical means to do so,” it said. Google’s Gmail qualifies as an interactive computer service for the purposes of Section 230 immunity.

Precedent in the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals appears to approve decisions that unsolicited marketing emails are objectionable material for purposes of Section 230, said the order. Calabretta likewise said a provider such as Google can filter spam, including marketing emails, as objectionable material under Section 230, it said.

In light of the “near-universal use” of spam filters by providers such as Google, Calabretta agrees with “the weight of authority” that a content provider or user could easily conclude that spam emails are harassing within the meaning of the 2003 Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, said the order. In any case, spam emails “are similar enough to harassment as to fall within the catchall ‘otherwise objectionable,’” as it’s written into the statute, it said. “The fact that the RNC sent emails to individuals who requested them at some point in time does not undermine this conclusion,” it said.

Even if Google weren’t entitled to Section 230 immunity, each of the RNC’s claims “would still be subject to dismissal,” said Calabretta’s order, because they either aren’t a claim on which relief can be granted, or because the RNC “failed to establish it is entitled to relief.”

Two of the RNC’s claims, for example, center on applying common carrier requirements to Google’s Gmail service, said the order. The RNC concedes its claims under the Telecommunications Act are precluded by binding precedent, but it asks this Court to extend the California common carrier law, which requires common carriers to indiscriminately provide their services, to apply to Google, it said. But no court, much less a court interpreting California’s common carrier law, “has found an email service provider to be a common carrier,” it said. Calabretta’s court “declines to be the first,” it said.