RNC Lawsuit Against Google Dismissed

On January 16, 2026, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the Republican National Committee's lawsuit against Google. The RNC alleged that Google discriminated against it by routing its fundraising emails to Gmail spam folders during critical fundraising periods in 2022. The dismissal looks like a win for mailbox providers, but the ruling is non-precedential, which limits how much weight email senders can put on it.

The RNC's theory was political animus

The RNC claimed that Google sent millions of its emails to spam folders for a short period each month from February to September 2022, and that the filtering intensified toward the end of each month, when its fundraising historically performed best. The RNC's position was that Google did this to harm Republican fundraising out of political animus. It brought claims under California's common carrier statute, the Unruh Civil Rights Act, the Unfair Competition Law, and state tort law for interference with prospective economic relations.¹

The district court in Sacramento was skeptical of these claims from the start. It pointed to A/B testing in which nearly identical RNC emails received different treatment, with one landing in spam while another reached the inbox. That suggested Google's spam filtering was operating as designed rather than targeting the RNC.²

Spam filtering is a service to recipients, and every claim failed on that point

The Ninth Circuit rejected each of the RNC's claims, and the same fact did most of the work: the RNC is not a Gmail user.

Google owes senders no common carrier duty

A common carrier claim under California law requires a "special relationship" between the carrier and the party it carries. The panel found that "the relationship between an email sender and Google is an imperfect fit for the traditional carrier-passenger framework," and noted that the RNC cited no authority extending California common carrier regulations to email.³

More fundamentally, the court held that even if Google were a carrier of the RNC's emails, the claim would still fail. The activity at issue was spam filtering, which is a service Google provides to its users. The RNC alleged that it was not a Gmail user and did not use Gmail to send messages, so it never intended to use whatever carriage services Google provides.⁴

A sender that never used Gmail has no Unruh Act standing

To establish statutory standing under the Unruh Act against an online business the plaintiff never transacted with, the plaintiff must allege that it "visited the business's website, encountered discriminatory terms, and intended to make use of the business's services."⁵ The RNC alleged none of those things. Sending email to Gmail addresses did not make it a user of Gmail.

The UCL claim had no ongoing conduct to enjoin

Injunctive relief under the UCL requires a plausible threat of continuing misconduct. The RNC itself alleged that the email diversion "stopped" in October 2022, and it pleaded no facts suggesting it would resume. Under California law, that forecloses an injunction.⁶

A memorandum disposition binds no one

The court issued its decision as a memorandum disposition marked "Not For Publication," which signals that the panel saw the outcome as controlled by existing precedent. Under Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3, it is not precedent. Other courts can treat it as persuasive, but no court has to follow it.⁷

Senders should read the reasoning, not the result

The reasoning is still useful to senders. Spam filtering is a service provided to and for the benefit of recipients. Mailbox providers build these systems to protect their users from unwanted mail, not to deliver whatever a sender wants delivered, and courts are unlikely to treat them as common carriers obligated to deliver all mail regardless of content or reputation.

The A/B testing in the district court record makes the second point. Nearly identical messages can get very different treatment, which is what algorithmic filtering looks like from the outside. A sender who sees that pattern is looking at filtering behavior that depends on reputation, engagement, and authentication, and those are the things a sender can change.

The RNC said it was evaluating its options, but the standing problems the court identified will follow any version of this lawsuit brought by a sender that doesn't use the service it is suing over.

This post does not constitute legal advice. Readers should consult competent legal counsel before taking action based on the analysis presented here.