Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | pagadesign)

The Republican National Committee is suing Google over Gmail's spam filtering, claiming the company is "unlawfully discriminating against" the RNC 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," claims the lawsuit filed Thursday in US District Court for the Eastern District of California. The spam filtering has "caused the RNC to lose valuable revenue in California and the rest of the country, and Google's conduct will continue to cost the RNC further revenue in the coming weeks as the 2022 midterm election looms, and beyond," it says.

The lawsuit argues that the "timing of Google's most egregious filtering is particularly damning." The RNC said nearly all of its emails get through to users' inboxes for most of each month, but that the ratio flips at the end of the month.