Section 230 Preempts Lawsuit Over Unwanted Gmail Spam–Dor v. Google

February 24, 2026 · by · in Content Regulation, Derivative Liability, Spam

The plaintiff, Francesse Senat Dor:

asserts that Google’s spam filter failed to block abusive, spoofed, and spam emails from reaching her Gmail account. She says that reading these emails caused her emotional distress, and although she does not allege that the emails ever reached anyone else but her, she contends that they somehow damaged her reputation and disrupted her “professional communications and ongoing federal litigation.”

She sued Google for negligence, emotional distress, and something she calls “platform harm.” Yes, this is a pro se/IFP lawsuit. Unsurprisingly, it fails (multiple ways).

Section 230. The court says:

All the plaintiff’s claims are fundamentally based on her assertion that the defendant allowed certain unwanted messages through Gmail’s spam filters. Because she seeks to hold the defendant liable for its decisions related to monitoring and screening of emails, her claims “fall squarely within the exercise of a publisher’s role” and are “therefore subject to Section 230’s broad immunity.” [cite to Ynfante v. Google.] Finally, the emails in question came from an information content provider distinct from the defendant. The plaintiff does not allege that the defendant is the creator or developer of any of these emails.

Dor is suing Gmail for doing too little spam filtering. The court responds that spam filtering is the exercise of editorial discretion. This is an implicit but emphatic rejection of the must-carry obligations baked into arguments that email should be regulated like common carriage.

Then again, you can see how spam filters can’t win with  plaintiffs. Dor thinks there is too little filtering. The RNC thought Gmail did too much filtering. Spam filters could manage their liability only if, like Goldilocks, they got it just right. Otherwise, someone on one side or the other would rip them to shreds in court if the law allowed them to do so.

Prima Facie Case

The court alternatively dismisses the case for failure of the prima facie elements. Once again, Section 230 reform would not change the outcome of this case.

Negligence: “there is no indication that the defendant had a “special relationship
of custody or control” with the plaintiff. In addition, her claimed harms—emotional distress, reputational damage, and disruption of her communications—are attenuated from what the defendant is claimed to have done here, such that a reasonable person would not anticipate that the claimed harms were likely to result.” To be fair, it’s entirely foreseeable that an email address will receive crap spam. A reasonable person, however, doesn’t read the spam or, if they do, believe it to be true.

Emotional distress: “the plaintiff’s complaint alleges that the defendant failed to filter out certain emails, and those emails were distressing when she read them. The foreseeability element of both the intentional and negligent forms of emotional distress is lacking, because the defendant could not have plausibly foreseen that she would receive these emails from unknown third parties, and that she would be severely emotionally distressed by receiving them.”

“Platform Harm” (which the court interprets as a defamation claim): “The plaintiff does not allege that the defendant published a defamatory statement to a third party. Based on her complaint, the only person to receive the emails was herself.”

Implications

I wasn’t sure why this lawsuit got filed. Was it because Dor actually read her spam emails and thought they meant something? If so, this legal dilemma might be simply fixed with a short tutorial on how to manage spam emails.

I remind younger readers that spam used to be one of the top 3 Internet Law issues around a quarter-century ago. See my 2004 essay on the topic. We almost never see spam-related lawsuits nowadays. I think this reflects how improved spam filtering has ameliorated the issue to the point where spam is a minor nuisance. Notice how if this lawsuit succeeded (which it never had a chance of doing), holding spam filters liable for what they missed would make it impossible to offer spam filters at all.

Case Citation: Dor v. Google LLC, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32957 (D. Conn. Feb. 13, 2026)

Prior Blog Posts on Common Carriage