Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | pagadesign)

A federal judge yesterday granted Google's motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which claims that Google intentionally used Gmail's spam filter to suppress Republicans' fundraising emails. An order dismissing the lawsuit was issued yesterday by US District Judge Daniel Calabretta.

The RNC is seeking "recovery for donations it allegedly lost as a result of its emails not being delivered to its supporters' inboxes," Calabretta noted. But Google correctly argued that the lawsuit claims are barred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the judge wrote. The RNC lawsuit was filed in October 2022 in US District Court for the Eastern District of California.

"While it is a close case, the Court concludes that... 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. On the merits, the Court concludes that each of the RNC's claims fail as a matter of law for the reasons described below," he wrote.

Enlarge / Screenshot from RNC's "Beat Biden" ad. (credit: Republican National Committee )

Shortly after US President Joe Biden announced his 2024 presidential run—asking Americans to re-elect him so he can “finish the job!”—the Republican National Committee (RNC) responded with a 100 percent AI-generated video. The 30-second RNC ad urged voters to “Beat Biden,” or else suffer disastrous consequences that the RNC suggests would likely come to pass if Americans voted to re-elect “the weakest president we’ve ever had.”

The RNC video opens with a fake news announcer calling the 2024 presidency for Biden. On the screen flashes a dark, AI-generated image of Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, smiling and waving in front of a sea of American flags. From there, a series of AI-generated scenes show the faked future that the RNC imagines that this election result would bring, depicting banks closing, China invading Taiwan, San Francisco crime skyrocketing, and 80,000 “illegals” overwhelming the border.

“Who’s in charge here?” the RNC’s video asks. “It feels like the train is coming off the tracks.” The video then concludes with an image of Biden bent over his desk, appearing worried as he faces down the RNC’s slogan, “Beat Biden.”

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | pagadesign)

Google is ending a pilot program that let political emails bypass the Gmail spam filter, and it says it hasn't decided whether to convert the pilot into a more long-term option for political campaigns. The Republican National Committee (RNC) sued Google in October 2022 over its spam-filtering practices but never participated in the pilot program, Google said Monday in a motion to dismiss the RNC's lawsuit.

"The Pilot Program was made available to all eligible participants on a non-partisan basis" and "is scheduled to run through January 31, 2023," Google's court filing said.

The Federal Election Commission approved Google's pilot program in August 2022 amid Republican claims of Google bias. "As the Complaint makes clear, the RNC has chosen not to participate in Google's FEC-approved Pilot Program," Google's motion to dismiss said.

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.