Last year, Republicans sued Google, alleging that Gmail unfairly filters their fundraising messages to the spam folder. Less than 12 months later, it’s basically a wrap.
U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Calabretta dismissed the Republican National Committee’s lawsuit on Thursday, per the Washington Post. According to Calabretta, it was a “close case” but there wasn’t sufficient evidence on the RNC’s part to prove that Google had acted in bad faith. Calabretta did allow the RNC to amend and refile the case, which the organization said it would do, according to the Post.
In case you missed the lawsuit when it first popped up last October, the specific accusation was that conservative fundraising emails get sent to the spam filter in Gmail more than liberal ones. It was based on a study from North Carolina State University, whose authors later claimed that the Republicans had taken the results out of context.
Mashable has done some of our own reporting on this and found that Gmail spam filtering has a lot more to do with sender behavior than political affiliation. In short, sending a lot of unopened emails in a short period of time increases your chance at getting sent to the spam folder. It’s not a stretch to imagine that’s what’s happening to these fundraising emails.
