RNC’s Gmail Spam Claims Based on ‘Nothing But Speculation,’ Says Google

Google, like almost every email service provider, “uses sophisticated filtering technology to protect users of its free Gmail service from unwanted and dangerous spam emails,” said Google’s memorandum of points and authorities Thursday (docket 2:22-cv-01904) in U.S. District Court for Eastern California in Sacramento in support of its motion to dismiss the Republican National Committee’s Oct. 10 first amended complaint (see 2310120002).

The RNC directly benefits from Google’s spam filters “because they make Gmail a safer, more convenient, and more popular platform for the RNC to engage with its supporters,” said Google’s memorandum. The RNC “nevertheless seeks to hold Google liable for operating those spam filters,” claiming that Google uses them to discriminate against the RNC’s emails based on the RNC’s political affiliations and views, it said.

The court already dismissed the RNC’s claims once because they are implausible and legally defective, said Google’s memorandum. U.S. District Judge Daniel Calabretta, in his Aug. 24 order, granted the RNC partial leave to amend to establish that Google didn’t act in good faith and to establish that Google isn’t shielded by Section 230 immunity (see 2308250030).

The RNC’s amended complaint doesn’t change the judge’s “analysis,” said the memorandum. If anything, the amended complaint “makes it even more clear that the RNC’s claims are based on nothing but speculation and unreasonable inferences,” it said. After two failed opportunities to plead viable claims even with the benefit of the court’s guidance, there’s “no reason to believe that the RNC will ever be able to state a claim for relief against Google on these theories,” it said. The amended complaint should be dismissed with prejudice, it said.

The RNC alleges that many of its emails to Gmail users were sent to the users’ spam folders for a few days each month, usually at the end of the month, during 2021 and 2022, said Google’s memorandum. The RNC admits that the end-of-month inboxing “fluctuations” have stopped and haven’t recurred since October 2022, it said.

According to the RNC, those alleged inboxing fluctuations can’t be explained “by mundane aspects of bulk email administration, such as the volume, frequency, and timing of the RNC’s emails and Gmail users’ reactions to them,” said Google’s memorandum. The RNC instead says the only plausible explanation is that Google relegated millions of RNC emails en masse to users’ spam folders because Google is antagonistic to the RNC’s political views, it said. But the amended complaint reveals that the RNC’s allegations “are based on guesswork -- not actual Google data,” it said.

Even assuming the RNC’s inboxing-rate estimates are accurate, “they hardly suggest a plot by Google” to secretly suppress the political speech and income of a major political party, said Google’s memorandum. There’s nothing “odd or remarkable” about bulk emails being sorted into spam folders, regardless of whether the sender is or isn’t a political entity, it said.