WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. judge dismissed a lawsuit against Alphabet Inc’s Google on Thursday. The lawsuit was filed by the Republican National Committee (RNC) late last year, alleging that Google sent their emails to users’ spam folders.
In a filing on Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Calabretta stated that although it was a “close case,” the political committee did not provide sufficient evidence that Google acted in bad faith by filtering RNC messages into Gmail users’ spam folders.
“Accordingly, the Court will GRANT Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss, with partial leave to amend,” Judge Calabretta wrote.
The RNC filed the lawsuit in October of last year, accusing Google of “discriminating” against the organization based on its conservative views. They claimed that Google had sent their bulk emails regarding election fundraising and other matters directly to spam folders.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in California. Google promptly refuted the claims. Lawyers from Google’s legal firm Perkins described the allegations as a “far-fetched theory” and a “dark conspiracy.”
Email services commonly employ spam filters to separate unsolicited “spam” messages from legitimate emails.
For a long time, Republicans have accused major tech companies of bias against conservative views and suppressing free speech. However, these allegations are strongly denied by the companies.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington, editing by Deepa Babington)
Credit: The Star : Tech Feed
