A US$50 million lawsuit brought against tech giant Google by Rep. Tusli Gabbard (Democrat – Hawaii) has reportedly been dismissed by a federal judge this week. Gabbard’s lawsuit alleged that Google censored the presidential candidate’s free speech by suspending her advertising account after she crushed Kamala Harris in a debate.
The New York Times reported that a US$50 million lawsuit brought against Google by presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard has been dismissed by a federal judge. The lawsuit accused Google of infringing on Gabbard’s free speech by suspending her advertising account last year.
Gabbard’s lawsuit alleged that Google blocked her ads shortly after the first Democratic presidential debate. Gabbard’s lawsuit cited two Breitbart News scoops demonstrating the company’s political bias, the Google Tape, a recording of Google executives’ dismayed reaction to President Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, and leaked emails showing senior google employees trying to remove ad revenue from Breitbart.
This week judge Stephen V. Wilson of the US District Court for the Central District of California, granted Google’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit stating that Gabbard had failed to prove that the First Amendment clause that prohibits the government from curbing free speech applied to Google as a private company.
Judge Wilson wrote in his order that the Gabbard campaign’s lawsuit failed to establish “how Google’s regulation of its own platform is in any way equivalent to a governmental regulation of an election.” The lawsuit alleged that Google infringed on Gabbard’s right to free speech when the company suspended the campaign’s advertising account for six hours on June 27 and 28 following the first Democratic presidential debate.
Full Content: New York Times
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