Liam Conner
Washington – TikTok, the widely popular social media app, and its parent company ByteDance filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department on Tuesday over a new law that requires it to cut ties with its China-based owner within one year or be effectively banned from the United States. .
O petition filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., alleges that the measure signed into law by President Biden last month is unconstitutional, in part because it violates the First Amendment rights of its US users by effectively blocking their access to the popular forum. Filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the petition asks the court to block Attorney General Merrick Garland from enforcing the measure.
The lawsuit names TikTok and ByteDance as plaintiffs and was filed against Garland.
O foreign aid package approved by Congress last month it included a provision that required the platform’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell its stake in TikTok within a year. If the company fails to meet the one-year deadline, TikTok will lose access to app stores and web hosting providers, effectively cutting it off to about 170 million users in the US.
But TikTok said in its filing that while lawmakers portrayed the move as a choice between divestment or a ban, “there is no doubt: the law will force the shutdown of TikTok by January 19, 2025, silencing the 170 million Americans who use the platform.” communicate in ways that cannot be replicated elsewhere.”
The company said the divestment required by law within 270 days, subject to a 90-day extension by the president, “is simply not possible” and pointed to the Chinese government’s opposition to the sale of the technology that made TikTok so popular in the U.S.
“For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single named speech platform to a permanent national ban and prohibits all Americans from participating in a unique online community of more than 1 billion people around the world,” wrote TikTok. in your archive.
TikTok has come under scrutiny by Congress amid concerns about the app’s ties to China. U.S. officials have warned that the video-sharing platform is a threat to national security, in part because the Chinese government could use it to spy on Americans or weaponize the app to influence the public by promoting or suppressing certain content.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told the House Intelligence Committee in March that the Chinese government could use TikTok to gain access to Americans’ phones. Lawmakers from both chambers of Congress and across party lines also expressed alarm about the app after participating in confidential briefings.
TikTok’s legal effort was not unexpected, as the company has committed to challenging the law’s constitutionality in court. The company pointed to an initiative called “Project Texas,” launched in 2022, to demonstrate its efforts to protect U.S. user data and the integrity of its platform from the influence of foreign governments.
TikTok accused Congress in its petition of ignoring its investments “in favor of the politically expedient and punitive approach of unfavorably targeting a publisher and speaker (TikTok Inc.), a speech forum (TikTok), and the ultimate owner of that forum (ByteDance Ltd . )”
Caitlin Yilek and Kaia Hubbard contributed to this report.
