A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a Republican National Committee lawsuit alleging that Google’s email spam filters illegally suppressed their missives, dealing the campaign group a crushing blow in a lengthy battle that has riled conservative lawmakers in Washington.

U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Calabretta wrote that while it was a “close case,” the RNC had not “sufficiently pled that Google acted in bad faith” by filtering their messages into spam filters in its popular Gmail service. Calabretta further ruled that Section 230, the embattled law that largely shields digital services from lawsuits over third-party content they host or moderate, protected Google from the claim.

In 2022, Republicans seized on an academic study finding that Google’s filtering algorithms demonstrated a bias against conservative candidates, reigniting claims that the tech giant’s technology tips the electoral scales toward liberals by targeting voices on the right. Tech companies have long disputed the allegations.

The study also found that rival email services Outlook and Yahoo demonstrated a less pronounced political bias against liberals, and its authors told The Washington Post that GOP leaders had taken their findings out of context.