Andrew Ferguson, the Chairman of the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC), dispatched a letter to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google's parent company Alphabet, accusing Gmail of so-called partisan filtering issues. In the letter, Ferguson asserted that, to his knowledge, Gmail's spam filter appears to impede the delivery of Republican messages to users, while Democratic messages of a similar nature are not subjected to the same blockage. In response, a Gmail spokesperson clarified that the spam filter operates impartially across all users and does not take political ideologies into account. Google has consistently rejected similar allegations leveled by Republicans and conservatives in the past.

Ferguson cautioned in his letter that such behavior could prompt an FTC investigation and potential enforcement measures. Prior to this, the Republican National Committee had accused Google of deliberately rerouting Republican email messages into users' spam folders, but a U.S. judge dismissed the lawsuit.