Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 1, 2025 /
12:30 pm
A Florida woman has secured the last of her Google data after the tech company disabled her account following emails pertaining to pro-life advocacy.
With the help of the Thomas More Society, Trudy Perez-Poveda sued Google in 2024 when the company allegedly blocked her from her account after she sent an email attempting to plan a Catholic Mass and prayer event outside of a local abortion clinic.
The lawsuit claimed that “approximately one hour” after she sent the email, Google suspended Perez-Poveda’s account with no explanation. After several days of trying to recover her account, Google informed her that it had “permanently disabled” it for violating the company’s “acceptable use policy.”
Since filing the lawsuit in July 2024, Perez-Poveda has been able to retrieve some of her messages and data in small quantities with the help of third-party tech experts. But with no assistance from Google, the majority of it remained inaccessible.
In a July 31 press release, the Thomas More Society reported that the last of Perez-Poveda’s data suddenly became “inexplicably accessible for the first time since this controversy began,” within just days of a court-imposed settlement deadline in the lawsuit.
An IT expert confirmed that action taken on Google’s end allowed the data to return. Perez-Poveda recovered the data one year and 10 months after Google first locked her out of her account.
“Google claimed that certain tools existed online to allow her to retrieve the remaining data despite tech experts proving those tools to be unworkable,” the Thomas More Society said. “At another point, Google even falsely claimed the data never had been withheld from her at all.”
“Google has dragged Trudy Perez-Poveda through a land of smoke and mirrors, apparently because she was a pro-lifer who had the fortitude to stand up to Google and demand what belonged to her,” attorney Matt Heffron said.
Trudy “was not going to let a big-tech behemoth shut down her lifesaving mission to protect the unborn,” Heffron said.
“I was able to regain access to more than a decade worth of personal data and continue my mission to save lives in our Jacksonville community,” Perez-Poveda said in the press release.
She added: “Big tech companies cannot be allowed to decide what speech is acceptable.”
Tessa Gervasini is a staff reporter for Catholic News Agency.
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