Lawmakers Challenge Google’s $10 Million Bid for Spirit Data

More than 120 lawmakers are challenging Google’s proposed $10 million bid for Spirit Airlines’ deidentified workplace data, arguing that employee records could remain identifiable and be exposed to artificial-intelligence systems.

Google was selected as the winning bidder for Spirit’s “Deidentified Data” at an Aug. 14, 2026, bankruptcy auction. Mercor.io Corporation was named the alternate bidder. The proposed transaction excludes passenger profiles and frequent-flyer information and remains subject to court approval.

The dataset includes about 100 million emails and 500 million Microsoft Teams messages. A labor objection lists approximately 80,000 email accounts, 17,082,644 OneDrive items and 20,577,677 SharePoint items, as well as decades of payroll, timekeeping, training, travel and recruiting records.

The potentially included records span employment timekeeping, compensation and tax details, contracts, medical and accommodation information, and disciplinary files.

Google said it will not receive personally identifiable information and that a third party will scrub the data before transfer. The company said it acquired part of Spirit’s enterprise dataset to help improve its products and AI models.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Steven Horsford led the Oct. 8 letter, which had 119 additional congressional signatories for 121 lawmakers overall.

“Spirit’s workers handed over this information because their jobs required it, not so it could be sold to train a different company’s AI,” Horsford said.

The lawmakers argue that removing names, email addresses and other direct identifiers may not make the information anonymous if separate datasets can be linked. Labor groups have sought stronger restrictions on profiling, re-identification, downstream transfers and the use of medical, compensation, disciplinary and safety-related records.

The bankruptcy estate is conducting the asset sale under court supervision. The proposed Google transaction concerns enterprise data for product development and AI-model training rather than Spirit’s passenger database.

The U.S. bankruptcy court is scheduled to consider approval of the sale Oct. 14 at 11 a.m. ET (15:00 UTC).