\n<\/p>\n
The suit\u00a0complained Google intentionally sent RNC political emails to Gmail users\u2019 spam folders<\/a>, and the RNC sought restitution for \u201cdonations it allegedly lost as a result\u201d of those lost emails. The RNC cited a North Carolina State University study that found Gmail was more likely<\/a> to mark emails from Republican campaigns as spam. One of the study\u2019s authors spoke to the Post<\/em><\/a> <\/em>in May last year, saying its findings had been misrepresented. Muhammad Shahzad noted that it only tested default email settings \u2014 in tests on accounts where users indicated their preferences by marking some messages as spam, \u201cthe biases in Gmail almost disappeared.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n While US District Court Judge Daniel Calabretta described the RNC\u2019s suit as a \u201cclose case,\u201d he dismissed the Committee\u2019s claims, writing that it had \u201cfailed to plausibly allege its claims\u201d that Google\u2019s filtering was done in bad faith. Google claimed that many of the filtered emails were likely picked up by its spam algorithms because of user complaints and pointed to problems with the RNC\u2019s domain authentication and frequent emails as other culprits.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The judge also said Republican emails could be considered \u201cobjectionable\u201d content based on the definition in the CAN-SPAM Act and said that Google designating them spam is protected by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The decision left Republicans with partial \u201cleave to amend to establish a lack of good faith\u201d on Google\u2019s part.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n