WASHINGTON, D.C.— U.S. Congresswoman Debbie Lesko (AZ-08) reintroduced the Political Bias in Algorithm Sorting Emails Act (Political BIAS Emails Act) to prohibit providers of email services from using filtering algorithms to flag emails from political campaigns that consumers have elected to receive as spam. The legislation brings transparency and accountability to a growing issue of Big Tech’s discriminatory influence in partisan politics.

“The Political BIAS Emails Act is a commonsense bill that will help restore trust in our elections systems,” said Congresswoman Lesko. “Americans should not be left to wonder if Big Tech email service providers are discriminating against any political party or issue. All emails, regardless of their political content, should be given the same opportunities to reach inboxes.”

In 2022, researchers from North Carolina State University found that nearly 70 percent of emails from candidates registered with the Republican Party were sent to spam email boxes by Google, compared to less than 1 in 10 from Democrat candidates from 2019 to 2020. Given Gmail holds over 50 percent of the email market in the U.S., about 130.9 million Americans are impacted by Google’s attempt to silence Republicans. There are currently ongoing efforts in federal court to hold Google accountable for its actions.

Congresswoman Lesko previously introduced this legislation in the 117^th Congress. In addition to the prohibition on filtering algorithms for political campaign emails, the bill requires each operator of an email service to publicly release a quarterly transparency report that includes the total number of instances and the percentage of emails flagged as spam from political campaigns of candidates belonging to the Republican and Democratic parties.

Lesko was joined by U.S. Representatives Jeff Duncan (SC-03), Clay Higgins (LA-03), Darrell Issa (CA-48), August Pfluger (TX-11), Elise Stefanik (NY-21), Greg Steube (FL-17), and Beth Van Duyne (TX-24) in introducing this legislation.

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