Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard has filed a $50 million suit against Google in which the Hawaii representative claims her free speech rights were violated by the internet giant when it suspended her campaign’s advertising account following a Democratic debate last month.
Gabbard filed the suit in federal court in Los Angeles late Thursday. In the suit, Tulsi Now Inc., a campaign committee for Gabbard, says that Google hasn’t provided it with “a straight answer—let alone a credible one” for why it suspended Gabbard’s advertising account for six hours on June 27 and June 28 following the first debate of Democratic presidential candidates. The account was reinstated and is currently active.
Gabbard, who has been polling at around 1% among the field of Democratic candidates, benefited from a increase in Google searches shortly after the debate. The candidate’s campaign wanted to capitalize on Gabbard’s spike in interest, but said Google shut down advertising efforts just as searches about Gabbard reached a peak.
The lawsuit alleges that Google might have taken down Gabbard’s ad account due to her stance on seeking greater federal oversight of many large tech companies that have access to troves of individuals’ personal data.
“For hours, as millions of Americans searched Google for information about Tulsi, and as Tulsi was trying, through Google, to speak to them, her Google Ads account was arbitrarily and forcibly taken offline,” the lawsuit said. “By acting to silence Gabbard at exactly the moment when her speech was most important, and most ready to be heard—and in the single most politically charged context in the United States, a presidential election campaign Google violated the Campaign’s federal and State rights to free speech.”
In a statement given to this news organization, Google didn’t address Gabbard’s suit. However, the company said that an unexpected large increase in spending on advertisements caused its internal systems to shut down Gabbard’s ad campaign as a preventative measure against possible fraud.
“We have automated systems that flag unusual activity on all advertiser accounts,” Google said. “In this case, our system triggered a suspension and the account was reinstated shortly thereafter.”
Google went on to deny that the suspension was in any way related to Gabbard’s political views.
“We are proud to offer ad products that help campaigns connect directly with voters,” Google said. “And we do so without bias toward any party or political ideology.”