Reading email into the common carrier law would implicate significant policy and Constitutional considerations that the California Legislature has not addressed. As the Court previously discussed, “if email providers are common carriers, they would have an obligation to deliver each of the messages that were entrusted to them” including unwanted and spam emails that could be harmful and disruptive to email users and providers. And such a regulation would impose on email providers’ First Amendment rights.

A common carrier not just a common carrier of messages can provide multiple tiers of service. Google could provide a mass mailing tier. The end user could on his own initiative apply a filter to the mass mailing tier of service.

The FCC long ago declared an email service to be an obvious common carriage service. No constitutional issues are implicated by such a determination. The common law of common carriage is a species of contract law, long predates the US Constitution, and is without Constitutional considerations.

Sorry! CA Civ Code § 2208 (2023) specifies "otherwise than by telegraph". This statute also uses "transmit" instead of "transport'.

2208. A common carrier of messages, otherwise than by telegraph, must transmit messages in the order in which he receives them, except messages from agents of the United States or of this State, on public business, to which he must always give priority. But he may fix upon certain times for the simultaneous transmission of messages previously received.

If Email and other Internet message services are not common carriers, why does CA Civ Code § 2207 (2023) use the word "transmit" instead of "transport"?